Painter/Artist
From 1946 to present.
Richard John Killeen was born in the year 1946, in Auckland, New Zealand. Richard is trained as a painter, but is most famous for his invention including different shaped pieces that are made of aluminium– the pieces are then organized on a wall for the final illustration. Each key piece is placed on the wall with extreme care and precision. These types of illustrations started between the 1980s and 2000s, as his most popular pieces. As he is recognized as a painter, he prefers being known as a general artist; is artistic styles variating from painting, to his aluminium work, and digital collage creations.
The artist’s only schooling was at the Auckland University School of Fine Art, from 1964 to 1966, and his work has been shown locally and internationally since 1967. Some of his early works were “realist ‘portraits’ of a suburban type” (Saines, 1999); he was very much a painter when he was going through his schooling in Auckland. He made various oil paintings that narrate the isolation of the urban scene with the pop styling of these paintings, this being something that caught the public’s attention of his work.
After getting more noticed in the late 1960s, Richard starts experimenting with other mediums and styles. In 1971, instead of simply painting on canvases, he moves on to painting on frames that are meant to hold the images, that year he exhibits at the Morris Louis exhibition in the Auckland City Art Gallery– he is invited to exhibit at Petar James Gallery in Auckland for the first time in 1972. Richard also starts using “stamps, ideograms, transparent images and thin scrubbed colour to make paintings” (Pond, 1999) in this year, and the following year starts using “stencils to make comb and grid paintings on white canvas” (Pond, 1999).
From 1974 to 1976, Richard does a lot of traveling for exhibitions– some new places, and some revisiting– as well as starts painting some triangulated grid paintings. In 1975, he wins the Tokoroa Art Award, and this starts his outstanding, and ground-breaking, work with aluminium. Another big step for Richard in 1975 was his first time leaving New Zealand to Sydney and Melbourne, Australia. The next year, he starts putting two mediums together, in this year; he puts triangulated grids and figurative images together.
In the years between 1977 and 1990, Richard is married to wife Margreta Chance, starts stencilling small creatures into his aluminium paintings, finally starts as a full time artist, has multiple exhibitions starting internationally, the birth of his son; Samuel, and his daughter; Zahra. He’s asked to speak at lectures and panels, mainly within New Zealand. In 1987, specifically, he destroys a lot of his paintings from 1965, unknown to why he did. His digital illustrations start in 1988, after buying a Macintosh IIcx along with Adobe Illustrator, and a laser printer in Los Angeles, California. He experiments with drawing and creating with the new software, finding collages the most enjoyable of the mediums, for he starts inserting various digital illustrations into his “cut-out” images and sculptures. Richard Killeen tries hard to put stories back into art, as shown with the ‘Stories We Tell Ourselves’ exhibition that was created by the Auckland Art Gallery in 1999. In the 129 piece, he doesn’t use words to portray these stories, as one would expect, but he uses a collection of various images and illustrations specifically placed and the aluminium it is mounted on.
Once the 2000s hit, Richard has finally found that he is much more content with producing digital illustrations, and continuing his “cut-out” aluminium wall illustrations. Part of the art style of the 2000s, he started creating paintings by “overlapping old images to make a newly complex, illusory, three dimensional space” (Ocula, p.1). This new style was meant to immerse the viewer more so into the painting or illustration. Richard still participates in many exhibitions; ones that are illustrations and other art pieces that he made on his own, or ones that he and other artists have collaborated on.
The artist seems a very quiet man, but he has a lot of insight to do with art. He likes to twist and change how one would look at a piece, try and provoke a lot of emotion out of the viewer of the illustration before them. The process he goes with when it comes to his wall mounted illustration collections is very scatter brained, he feels like a person that has trouble making up his mind, and keeping to what he likes, but he knows what he’s looking for, and won’t stop fiddling around until he finds just that; the perfect position for the perfect illustration collection. It shows in his work that each one of his pieces is full of calculated, but personal, choices– although, he does not identify as an expressionist.
Richard Killeen started his artistic journey as a painter, but throughout his lifetime, he has brought new styles and techniques for other artists, amazing pieces of art for so many people to enjoy, and insight into the art world that have had other people listening and wanting to learn more about. There is still more to come for Richard Killeen and his art, the world just hasn’t seen them yet.
References
Pound, F., & Killeen, R. (1999). Stories we tell ourselves: The paintings of Richard Killeen. Auckland, N.Z.: David Bateman.
Richard Killeen | Ocula – Artist Profile, Galleries, Exhibitions and Artworks (Richard Killeen | Ocula – Artist Profile, Galleries, Exhibitions and Artworks). (n.d.). Retrieved September 3, 2015, from http://ocula.com/artists/richard-killeen/
Richard Killeen. (n.d.). Retrieved September 3, 2015, from http://www.dilanaworkshop.co.nz/our-artists/?artist=10
Profiles – Richard Killeen | Television | NZ On Screen. (n.d.). Retrieved September 3, 2015, from http://www.nzonscreen.com/title/profiles-richard-killeen-1983
Richard Killeen. (n.d.). Retrieved September 3, 2015, from http://richardkilleen.com/CV.html
Maintenance (Getty). (n.d.). Retrieved September 3, 2015, from http://www.getty.edu/vow/ULANFullDisplay?find=Killeen, Richard&role=&nation=&prev_page=1&subjectid=500081941
Richard Killeen 