Richard Riverin

Date and Place of birth: December 2, 1942, Quebec City, Canada

A graduate in chemistry from Sherbrooke University, Richard Riverin began his career by formulating paint, inks and special coatings from 1966 to 1979. His interest for research and development was surpassed by his intense interest for art and its history. He learned everything he could about art and was well prepared when he finally made the jump in 1979, selling his interest in the successful specialty coatings manufacture that he had started from scratch seven years before, to become an artist and an art dealer.

He has since opened numerous art galleries throughout North America and his business continues to thrive today. Richard Riverin is also an author and two of his novels have been published: "Ghama-2, An Afterlife Story" & "Land Of Magic".

He is presently writing the third of the Afterlife Story trilogy "The Return of the Emissaries". Some say that his novels are just as good as his best paintings and that reading them has changed their values and enriched their life. " My thirst for knowledge was unquenchable; I wanted to know everything; looking perhaps for the answers to questions I hadn't yet formulated. Now I know most of the questions but only a few answers.

The more I learn, the more mysterious the world around me seems to become. One day, I lost my way in the woods up north and found myself in a strange place. The trees were huge and taller than I could imagine and no bushes were growing between them, not even a blade of grass. There was silence and I felt like I was walking in a sacred place, inside a cathedral of trees, which were talking to me. I couldn't quite catch the meaning of what they were telling me but here I knew I could find the answers to my questions. I just had to ask but I couldn't find the questions… In my paintings, I try to convey my wonder and my love for the world around me that has grown more and more mysterious.

To find my own expression in painting was a lengthy process. I had to develop my own appreciation of beauty and that took years for I was changing all the time. What looked to me like ultimate beauty at the age of thirty was not necessarily the same when I reached my sixties. It took me many years just to know what I really liked, and what I knew I would still like in the years to come. Gradually I came to feel comfortable with certain colors and color associations. Texture adds so much to a painting. This is why I paint with impetuous, spontaneous strokes of my pallet knife knowing that at any time I could ruin my painting with the wrong stroke or the wrong choice of color for that stroke. But I love the challenge and beside, unpredictable elements can only be created that way and that makes the painting so much more interesting." ..