Ryan is a New Hampshire native who currently resides in Portland, OR. His poster art has become a mainstay in the world of Rock poster art and beyond. He has worked with many of today’s promoters and up and coming bands as well as a host of concert venues, festivals and alternative businesses. His use of color and his immediately recognizable style are as free and loose as the music it has been created for. “My first love in art was the old psychedelic rock posters, and to actually be doing that now is a dream come true. I listen to the band as I’m creating the images, and just let the feeling of the music come through in the colors and design.”
In Ryan’s Own Words…
Growing up in New Hampshire, my first experiences with music art were at flea markets I’d attend on weekends. I would pore over stacks of albums checking out the cover art and occasionally run across an old Fillmore or Family Dog poster. People like Rick Griffin, Randy Tuten, and Stanley Mouse became my heroes.
In college at Penn State in the early 1990’s, I studied the worlds of Dali, Mucha, and Maxfield Parrish. Combining my love for music and visual art, I began to create poster art for local bands such as PLUV, The Purple Helmets, Grinch, and others. The very first one was for a blues band called “Bob Hideycat and the Groovy Boots” in 1990.
After graduating with a degree in printmaking in 1994, I wandered around the country for a few years, spending time drawing in Wyoming, Pennsylvania, Washington, New Hampshire, Delaware, California, Colorado, and everywhere in between. In the Fall of 1998, I landed in beautiful Ithaca, New York and soon created a series of posters for jamband shows at the historic venue, The Haunt (35 posters over 12 months), as well as other venues around town.
In the Spring of 2000, I decided that I had seen my last winter, at least for a while, and a few Phish tours and many miles later, I was living in Berkeley, California, and immediately began projects with Jambase, High Sierra music festival, the Joshua Tree Music Festival, and many acts like Tea Leaf Green, Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey , Animal Liberation Orchestra and more. Over the past 15 years i’ve fulfilled a lifelong dream of creating posters for the Fillmore in san francisco, and continued to work with bands of all levels (grateful dead, umphrey’s mcgee, moe., california honeydrops, and so many others) while also developing an extensive collection of non-band, non-gig related artwork. In december of 2014 my family and I relocated north to beautiful Portland Oregon.
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