The Richmond Area Arts Council is currently hosting a gallery by local artist Ronald Gosses, who specializes in creating multi-layered paintings with an extra dimension to them. The gallery, entitled “Fighting Injustice”,
When walking through a gallery of Ronald Gosses’ work, the first thing you might notice would likely be his prominent usage of contrasting colors, or his implementation of cut out photos and everyday objects attached to some of his paintings. However, if you only look at it using your eyes, you may never get to truly appreciate the purpose behind his newer works. Luckily as soon as you enter the room, there is a fishbowl full of 3-D glasses to remedy that problem, supplementing the average consumer with an augmented eye for art. These glasses are a primary reason for Gosses’ unique palette choices, as his paintings now hold an additional element of depth unique to his work.
“My name is Ronald Gosses, I’m very old—I’m 75—and I’m an artist, and have been an artist all my life.”
Gosses’ paintings have an added element of interactability due to the viewers donning their 3-D lenses, but the reason for that stems from an experience Gosses had as a child that forever changed how he was able to view the world.
“When I was a kid, I was playing with a kid on the block, and it was with day lily’s stalks, and they made a WHOOSH sound, you know, playing with swords? And accidentally, he scratched the pupil of my left eye, and so for a year and a half—two years, almost—I had to wear a patch over the eye, and then they would alternate the patch back and forth, hoping that I would see in 3D. Well, I didn’t. I couldn’t see in 3D.”
Gosses’ visual impairment made him unable to accurately perceive depth barring specific circumstances, like attending 3-D movies as a child. This would remain the case until Gosses was into his 60s, when a doctor gave him specialized training to be able to see in 3-D, albeit briefly. According to Gosses, this experience was the basis for his paintings moving forward, though his perception of them was unfortunately short-lived.
“So I wanted to paint something that I couldn’t see for most of my life, and then about 5 years ago I started to lose all the sight in my left eye. And so now, basically, I cannot see out of my left eye and I cannot see even with those glasses that it’s 3D but I know how to do it because I know the color combination and how to create it. So that’s why I paint the way I do, because I had a short period in which I could see 3D and I wanted to show everyone something that I missed most of my life.”
The effectiveness of Gosses’ 3-D approach is most apparent in some of his mixed-media pieces. Paintings may be composed of photo cutouts of his family with other objects like roses or model furniture seamlessly implemented onto the canvas—only to then be further embossed by the viewer’s 3-D glasses, which pull the often opposing colors to join the outcroppings. At the Richmond Area Arts Council, Director Randy Westbrook talks about the exhibit and the council’s role in local artistry.
“Ronald is a nationally/internationally known 3D artist who composes really interesting works. This gallery also had a theme of fighting injustice, and so some of the works especially in the first room deal with his family’s struggle against fascism and family history from Ronald’s family and so it addresses the danger of fascism.”
For paintings with historical significance, a small paper providing context is located next to each one. Their contents range anywhere from an explanation of minute family history to an overview of World War II era political turmoil, depending on the subject of the painting. According to Westbrook, exhibits with unique aspects to them like this are frequent occurrences at the Richmond Area Arts Center.
“We promote the arts in a variety of ways. We try to have exhibits come in every two months now, that’s my goal,” says Westbrook. “At one point, prior to the pandemic, we were doing one every month and a half, but we’re not quite back to that yet. Sometimes it’s a call to artists, sometimes it’s an individual show, as in this case, but we always do a reception. We always promote the events. We generally have good attendance at those, so that’s one side we do with the visual art.”
For as unique and meaningful of an experience a focused gallery exhibit like this is, it pales in comparison to simply walking through Ronald Gosses’ front door. Upon entering, you are immediately greeted by a vast array pf seemingly endless paintings covering every visible surface save a giant wall-sized mirror between two large statues. Unlike the Arts Council gallery, this display has no particular thematic throughline. Paintings are displayed of every genre, in every style, by tons of different artists. A great number are Gosses’ own works, but a significant amount are paintings by people he’s mentored, art his family has created, or simply pieces that got left behind in attic somewhere down the line only for Gosses to discover them.
Gosses is quick to correct that the people who he taught are not his students, but artists he’s mentored, and he jovially tells me about all their works, his house, his family’s history, the places he’s had galleries. He gleefully describes the process of making a painting that depicts an encroaching tsunami out of scrapped Monopoly pieces, or speaks nostalgically about the process of filling his expansive home library. In every aspect of his work, Gosses’ own hopeful mentality and unique outlook on art is apparent.
“Somebody says, ‘Do you like art’, well, I love all art. And I appreciate anything, I mean, you know, art is something so extreme. A lot of people are very staid—I call them snobs—you have to do it a certain way? There’s no such thing as you have to do anything a certain way.”
The Fighting Injustice exhibit will be on display at the Richmond Area Arts Council until October 20.
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