An Interview with Downtown NYC Artist Rick Prol

 Rick Prol, Empty City 1,  acrylic on diptych canvas, 96X156", Dec. 2021
 

By NOAH BECKER May, 15 2025

In your “Dark Cities” series, you depict urban decay alongside resilience. What personal experiences or observations led you to explore these contrasting themes? Do you feel like a survivor?

Only in hindsight, of course, do I think of myself as a survivor. A survivor of NYC, my youth in the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s, and all that entailed. “To live in this town you must be tough, tough, tough, tough, tough, tough, tough!” There was a lot of beauty to be seen when NYC was at its “ugliest” and most dangerous. Like the West Side Highway area where I grew up near. There were many hidden places, abandoned spaces, and secret rooms. Lots of art comes out of an environment like that. There was room to play in, and it was sometimes illegal—that was the fun part. I wasn’t so much a child of the streets, but I knew them well. I knew how to get around and avoid trouble, more or less. I loved NY back then. I still do, but it isn’t the same.

Your work examines social issues and political struggles within city life. How do you approach integrating these complex topics into your art without overshadowing the aesthetic elements?

I try to avoid being too literal and didactic in my work concerning social issues, politics, and otherwise. I leave much more up to the viewer to glean what they can from it and to interpret the work on their own, instead of saying what it is about or what it means—to a degree. The images I paint don’t refer to anything larger than themselves. They are a kind of urban expressionist surrealism.

Rick Prol, #3, Carpathian, acrylic on canvas, 36X36", 4/11/24

The cityscapes in “Dark Cities” evoke a sense of universality. How do you balance specific urban references with broader themes to resonate with a diverse audience?

I don’t care much about resonating with a diverse audience per se. I don’t think my work is necessarily for everyone, nor could it be, nor should it be. It is, I believe, accessible, however. In a certain sense, I feel they are understated, no matter how much burlesque strutting they may possess.

Can you discuss the techniques and mediums you employ to convey the textures and emotions of urban environments in your artwork?

I have used a wide variety of mediums for paintings, installations, and sculptures. I have used a lot of detritus that I find on the streets of the city—like window frames with broken glass—that I incorporate and add to the images. It is much harder to find the good stuff now, now that most everything has been renovated and gentrified.
 

#5, "Katastrof" installation at Nada Gallery, mixed media, 1985, photo by: Marion Scemama.
 

How has your perspective on urban life evolved throughout your career, and how is this evolution reflected in the “Dark Cities” series?

I believe my perspective on the city and city life remains in many ways very much the same as it was in the ’60s–’80s but also with significant changes. It is just not as exciting now. The “art scene” is nothing for me compared to what it was in those decades. There will never be anything like the 1980s art scene, of course. The city, with its energy and life, can be fun still, and it is filled with great art shows and museums with all the inspiration they offer.

The “Dark City” or “Empty City” series of works reflects this in some ways. It relates very much to the COVID pandemic and its aftermath—how it felt in those days early on in the quarantined atmosphere of NY, where I would go outside onto the sunlit streets in the afternoon and look up and down the avenues and streets and literally see no one. Very few cars, also. It was stunning to see—like a sci-fi horror film come to life. It was also very beautiful in its sad, tragic way. I had to make some kind of record of this, and that’s why I made all those images. Then the series evolved and morphed as it went along.

#4, "S.O.S.", acrylic on canvas diptych, found window frame of glass and wood, 96X156", 1985
 

In portraying the darker aspects of city life, what message or reflection do you hope viewers take away from your work?

The decay and resilience is the human spirit. That’s what they are about—and human folly and absurdity. Destructive and constructive impulses. They often speak of a kind of addiction: to art, or sex, or drugs, or booze. I gave up drugs by the age of 17, never smoked cigarettes, and have never been an alcoholic. I speak in a non-judgmental way about the suffering of addiction, of the addict’s suffering and self-destruction. It is a metaphor for humanity’s self-destruction, but I am not preaching about it. I identify with it in a way.

Rick Prol, 6, "Empty City" series, acrylic on canvas, 70X106", 8/13/22
 

How do you see the role of an artist in addressing urban social issues, and do you believe art can influence change in these contexts?

I think if you have a sensitivity to your environment, one cannot help but have that enter one’s work—but it could be in a completely abstract way, like de Kooning’s great 1950s paintings. What I would call his NYC paintings before he moved to the Springs, L.I. They have this landscape concept, and it is an urban city landscape.

What challenges do you face when translating complex urban narratives into visual art, and how do you overcome them?

As far as looking ahead—well, I don’t want to know, to a degree, what is around the corner all the time. It isn’t planned out in that way. I will keep eliminating the things I do by rote. I want to keep it alive by not just playing the same notes. Some musicians play the song note for note over and over again, while some truly reinvent a work each time. That is more how I want to be. WM