Hi, I'm Richelle :)

I'm an artist and software engineer living in Longmont, Colorado with my husband, Patrick and our cat, Lois. When I'm not in front of my easel or computer I love to travel, hike and spend time outside.

About Me

Originally from West Virginia, I’ve lived in the mountains my whole life- they’re in my blood. I spend a lot of time outdoors when I’m not working, and most of my creative inspiration comes from the landscape; both natural and built environments. For as long as I can remember, I’ve enjoyed making things and working with my hands, but I didn’t consider myself an artist until I created my first authentic body of work in college.

I paint in series and approach each collection a little differently. I'm heavily influenced by whatever I'm learning at the moment and, true to my analytical side, I love creating rules for each series. Whether I'm painting landscapes, abstracts, or something else, my approach to color is what seems to tie everything together.

Currently, I am self-represented and sell my work online and ship directly from my home studio in Longmont. I offer wholesale for retail shops and print discounts for interior designers (please email me for more information).

Thank you for stopping by! Take a look around or drop me a note to say hello. For more "behind the scenes" content, follow along with me on Instagram.

Richelle Cripe Profile Shot
Bio

Longmont-based artist Richelle Cripe is a painter whose works are fueled by philosophy and personal discovery. Her paintings explore color theory through the use of a restrained palette and the worlds of possibility that exist when we tune into the choice of imagination and allow our own perspective to be changed in the process. She received dual BA degrees in Art History and Fine and Studio Arts from the University of Kentucky and was a PhD student in the University of Colorado’s ATLAS program.

Ethos

Richelle grew up in the quiet hills of southern West Virginia sketching floor plans on graph paper and making elaborate structures from scraps and cardboard, more interested in building worlds than playing with the toy inhabitants. She checked out the maximum number of books on weekly trips to the library, but it wasn’t just about reading; the library itself was a secret world full of mysterious systems and archaic machines.

Romantic about the past but realistic about the future, Richelle embraces new technology without abandoning her love of traditional systems. She loves not just reading books but the physicality of books, painting for the gesture of painting, and computers for the unique language of code. Richelle is a citizen of two worlds: the pre-digital era and the newly made digital frontier.

Artist Statement

With every decision made, another route remains untaken. At each fork in the road are the shadows of the choices we didn’t make. Living alongside this reality is another world of untapped possibility that glimmers momentarily when caught by the right angle of sunlight. It’s hard for me to describe what draws me to art, but I believe my fascination originates from this idea. For me, painting is about opening up those other worlds of possibility: that other half. As an ambidextrous person, I’ve always felt this pull. The tension between art and science - the right brain and the left - is a theme in my life. By day, I’m a technologist working in the language of computers, which is a very regimented and analytical space to inhabit. Yet, I’m also an artist with a palette full of colors, using my intuition to quilt together landscapes and complex color combinations. Although this tension exists, I find that neither side is dominant (or both are dominant). It’s a complex and liminal space that I take joy in exploring.

 

When I paint, I tap into my unconscious mind and make each decision organically. None of my paintings are planned. I spontaneously make one decision - and then another - oftentimes with brushes in both hands. I intentionally introduce more decisions, rather than less, into my work to create more possibility in every painting. At times, I’ll choose a color for the sky above the desert’s sprawl only to discover that a previous choice I made no longer works with the new vision. So I revise my course, leaving another alternate painting just beneath the surface of the final one. The outcomes are as surprising to me as someone seeing them for the first time, and it’s this feeling that keeps me coming back to the blank canvas. As a colorist, the surprise of seeing my final paintings is even more profound when I apply the same, limited color palette to two or more works, which always yield wildly different worlds. My focus is never on the end result because my interest lies in the process of the journey - the exploration of the choices we make and the ones we don’t. Through this process, two outcomes unfold - the half that is and the other that has yet to be.