Ryan Dempsey was born in 2002 in Chandler, Arizona. Growing up at the desert’s edge, the warm, vibrant western light would shape how he worked. Being surrounded by painters of this phenomenon and heavily influenced from youth by various art movements out of Los Angeles, light and color became major areas of focus in Ryan's painting early on.  His current work features perception as the primary subject and medium; abstracting fleeting moments of everyday light into hi-res, humorous, surprising, sensuous paintings that invite spectators to look, linger, close one eye, and then close both.  Ryan’s approach to art making is fully analog and “anti-tech,” using traditional materials and ways of making to craft carefully-considered, seductive surfaces that directly oppose the cheap, quick, and artificial seen more and more commonly in the current era.  His work with optics led him to begin a study in 2023 on the effects of digital addition and blue light overconsumption on society’s collective perception of physical color.  Ryan believes that society’s perception and understanding of color as a whole is fundamentally changing in the digital age, and has been making work both as a means of research and as a response to the seemingly unstudied phenomenon.  

 

Ryan received his BFA in painting from Boston University in May, 2024 and now lives and works in the Los Angeles area.  If you have any questions for Ryan or would like to set up a studio visit, please fill out the contact form below