Rick Midler

RICK MIDLER (b. 1966, Clifton, NJ)

For over two decades, Midler's work has explored how human beings are prone to stress over the unknown, while the releasing of expectations creates humility and equanimity.

As playful brews of decorative papers form backdrops of quilted cloudscapes, his collages become dreamlike mediations. His cloud people - and drifting clouds that tend to camouflage them - are meant to inspire changes in perspectives and the welcoming of new possibilities.

With a bent toward calligraphy, these mixed media pieces rely on the cloud for its dynamism. In the words of Chinese artist and scholar Zhang Yanyuan (c.815-c.875), the most critical of all brushstrokes was “a cloud stretching for a thousand miles.” Artists of the time were urged to swing their wrists, “as rising clouds over a great mountain.”

His current series “CUMULUS HUMILIS” is inspired by a society-wide thirst for mental calmness, composure and evenness of temper during a collectively difficult year.