About

Richard Donagrandi was born in the suburbs of Detroit in 1966. He graduated with a Bachelors of Fine Art in Studio Art from Michigan State University in 1989, and moved to Chicago, Illinois shortly after.

Richard worked out of his home and focused on painting in photography in the 1990's, while he also met and fostered relationships with the publishers, editors, writers, and fellow artists that produced the city-wide publication Strong Coffee.

When Strong Coffee folded in the late 90's, Richard built a new website to showcase Chicago artists, ArtScope.net, which ran Chicago theater reviews until 2002, and art exhibit reviews until 2010, while also selling a program for artists to help maintain their artworks, contacts, exhibitions, and sales to help maintain the ArtScope website. Richard closed down the ArtScope.net website in 2019.

Richard had a dedicated studio space in the Flat Iron building in Chicago's Wicker Park/Bucktown neighborhood between 2000 and 2003, while he served on the board of the Around The Coyote Open Studio Art Fair between 1999 and 2001.

Richard currently works out of his home studio space in Chicago. His work has found homes nationwide with prominant private and corporate collections.

Statement

Art is the communication of experience. My work is always about my experience. Artworks that seem to convey a nonverbal but powerful statement, such as the immensity of space and intensity of emotion one experiences with a Rothko, or the energy and spirituality experienced with a VanGogh, have always had the most profound effect on me. Those type of experiences are the qualities I seek to put into my art. The experiences I seek to convey, though, aren't limited to a single emotion or thought, and can sometimes have contradictory narratives. It's the narratives we build around our experiences and emotions that form our personal philosophies, but biases can form and cloud our philosophies. An image -- no matter how conceptual -- can present a more complete thought and transcend most biases.

"Donagrandi's uniformity of format and composition at first glance seems a placid vehicle for visual expression, although it does create an effect of formal dignity. The framing and exhibition of each piece as an artwork to be investigated invites a superficial interpretation of it as a mere object of decor. Attention and time do however reward the perceptive. Donagrandi's studies in abstraction, like the Asian rituals of discernment, are starting points toward an appreciation of the refined interplay of color nuance. The merits of each piece are best appreciated by contemplation: like much that is pleasurable in life, their charm eludes words and logic. One stares at them in the way one examines bright sun or overcast cloud-glow on field grass -- intently and at leisure. They evoke the tremulous vision of heat on soil, and of reflection in water."

--G. Jurek Polanski, ArtScope.net

Representation

Richard is currently represented at: