September 30, 2012 – January 12, 2013
Reception: January 12, 2013
Characters, vehicles, and environments from our favorite movies and video games are often developed years in advance of their public debuts. Early on in the pre-production of movies and video games, concept artists collaborate with directors and producers to create the visual design for intellectual properties. Concept artists are required not only to have the drawing and painting skills of a fine artist and the knowledge of an industrial designer, but they also need to have the vision and creativity to generate entirely new designs and concepts. In the past few decades, concept artists have migrated away from working in oil, acrylic, pencil, and pen and have moved to a more efficient digital medium.
The Riverside Art Museum (RAM) is proud to present Painting in Pixels: An Exhibition of Concept Art that explores the work that defines this genre and showcases exemplary pieces of character design, creature design, vehicle design, and environment painting. The exhibition includes work from: Joon Hyung Ahn, Cliff Childs, Kenneth Shofela Coker, John ‘jD’ Dickenson, Thierry Doizon (aka barontieri), Colin Fix, Patrick Hanenberger, Mike Hernandez, Traci Honda, Anthony Jones, Jaime Jones, Cecil Kim, Derek Kosol, Kekai Kotaki, Michael Kutsche, Khang Le, Jerad S Marantz, Erik D Martin, Ben Mauro, Mike McCain, Annis Naeem, Albert Ng, James Paick, Bill Perkins, Darren Quach, Scott Robertson, Tara Rueping, Alex Ruiz, Eric Ryan, Jonathen Ryder, Jason Scheier, Thom Tenery, Tyler West, Brian Yam and Mike Yamada.
This exhibition is co-curated by:
- Nicole West is a Development Director II at Electronic Arts who has worked in the arts and entertainment fields since graduating from the University of Southern California. She has worked at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences, Babel Media, and Brash Entertainment. She was integral in the Into the Pixel exhibit from 2004-2007. Into the Pixel is an exhibit at E3 that brings together experts from the traditional fine art world and the interactive entertainment industry to display and discuss the art of the video game.
- Thomas Brillante has over 13 years of experience working for The Art Institute of California as an Assistant Director of Admission. He has had several of his former students obtain success in various fields of media design. Outside of work he is a patron of the arts from figurative painting to digital concept art. In 2009 he organized the Gifted Artist charity art auction benefiting the Loma Linda Children’s Hospital Foundation, a successful show that included illustrators and entertainment designers from all over world.