Fresh Paint: Rick Briggs and the Utility of Painting

Installation view of “Rick Briggs: I Love Painting + Painting Loves Me” at Satchel Projects, NY
 

By EDWARD WAISNIS May 6, 2025

Rick Briggs' practice has the purity of a freshly painted wall. This comes as little surprise given the semi-mythic knowledge that he was formerly a house and decorative painter by profession.

After graduation from Tyler School of Art, and relocating from his native Philadelphia, Briggs was amongst the cotillion of pioneering North Brooklyn painters who inadvertently ignited the gentrification of Williamsburg. His pragmatic move into the less glamorous side of what is termed a painter afforded the support in the realm of high art. The two sides of pursuit have cross-informed the each other with distinctly differing intent and results. Prefacing my discussion of, I Love Painting + Painting Loves Me, up at Satchel Projects in Chelsea, with this information, leaves open consideration for the poetry that has emerged out of the long tended balancing act that Briggs has managed.

A level of meaning can be attributed to the title of the show, in Briggs' recounting, to the impression the catch phrase used by 7-UP in the 80s, "I Like Sprite and Sprite Likes Me", made on him. As he explains, he was taken with the notion of ascribing emotions to an inanimate object. Appropriation from an object of Pop consumption, imparting empty calories, to a thing of higher intent has been transmogrified into an emphatic stroke against bland consumerism.*

Briggs engages in compositional mark making contingent on an invisible web. I hesitate to call it a grid, but the logic is purely formal. Spontaneity is also paramount, as evinced by his embrace of what appears to be a loose non-dominant hand embrace that celebrates the ‘awkward’ for its sense of charmed beauty.

It is fairly easy to suss out Briggs pantheon of influences–Hoffman, Newman, Motherwell and Míro bubble up to varying degrees from his surfaces–coming into harmony–at times in conflict–with his joshful genuflection to his parallel sustaining career.

The compact exhibition, comprised of two medium large canvases, a rare free-standing box/column-like painting-in-the-round-cum-sculpture, a wall of eight uniformly-sized small works that alter orientation (landscape vs. portrait), as well as a halfndful of paintings that fall between the ranges of scale and to my mind are amongst the the best on display.

Rick Briggs, “In the Dark Wood”, 2022, acrylic and oil stick on canvas, 30 x 24 inches.

In the Dark Wood, 2022, is a painting I would accord such an honor upon. Suggesting a Matisse/Kirkeby mashup in stance and held by a alluring coordination of color and dash in order to suspend the illusion of a grotto of glittering twilight. While comforting may not be the most complimentary term to deem a work of art, I find it an apt descriptor in this case.

Rick Briggs, “Bouquet for Mom”, 2017, alkyd and oil stick on sized, unprimed canvas, 24 x 30 inches.

Attraction resides in Bouquet for Mom, 2017, from the jump. Showcasing a navy blue looping outline frond-like form dressed by strategically placed black asterisk punctuations. Both sets of elements are drafted onto the sized raw canvas in oil stick and backed up a scribble, or two, or three, of red (also oil stick), a swishy patch of orange and four celestial-body suggestive discs–rendered from skins formed on the surface of a left open can of paint–in harmonizing shades of blue, white, yellow and orange. The latter holds predominance, in an alternately-read full blazing sun, or waning moon, position. It hits with a late-Matisse flavor with its precise lightness that communicates elegance.

Rick Briggs, “In the Beginning was the Garden”, 2017-19, alkyd, spray paint, oil stick and color swatch on canvas, 24 x 30 inches.
 

In the Beginning was the Garden, 2017-19, relies on layering, befitting it’s two year gestation, to bring it across the line. As recurring allusions to nature are in Briggs' wheelhouse–most likely attributable to the fact that Briggs now splits his time between the city and a country refuge upstate. When it comes to titles, Mighty Oak; A Walk in the Woods [for CM]; Sun Shower; and the afore-mentioned In the Dark Wood are a few examples. Here the connotation ascribed, in its lean to the Biblical, bestows an aura of exaltation. Could the strong Howard Hodgkin vibe be responsible for this attribute? Upon deconstruction, the Hodgkin homage resides in primarily in the obscuring field of green dabs through which one spies a couple of Briggs' ubiquitous alkyd paint skin orbs, a simplistic twin yellow/orange rainbow recalling arc, and the inclusion of a collaged color swatch from a commercial paint supplier 'buried amongst the bushes', to put it in colloquial terms.

Rick Briggs, “Whiplash”, 2020, acrylic, spray paint, oil stick, color swatch on canvas, 16 x 12 inches.

Rick Briggs, “Paradise”, 2020, spray paint, oil, color swatch on canvas, 16 x 12 inches.

The wall of 16 x 12 inch canvases activates the entire range of Briggs' toolbox. Ritual Object, 2020, pulls off the aura of a ritual icon with a stir stick in the role of a deity; the brooding palette enhances the solemn qualities. Whiplash, 2020, goes in the opposite direction employing a mood of frivolity. The experience taking a go on the carnival ride of the same name is evoked. Invocation another dizzying leisure activity, the gaiety in the picture carry the lift of a hot air balloon on a beautiful day. Paradise, 2020, spreads aerosol branches to support three ascending color swatches and a balayage of black strokes coalesce into kinship with the ascension of a reaching tree, the collaged swatches filling the role of either prominently placed lanterns, or windswept detritus caught in the boughs.

Rick Briggs, “Life Saver”, 2023, acrylic on canvas, 78 x 64 inches.

Life Saver, 2023, comprised of wide candy-colored bands to be found on the labeling of the confection cited have been applied using a roller. The quirk of incident attributable to the pass(es) of this standard instrument are left to stand unencumbered of inclusive attached, or collaged, elements as tracks of uninflected purity. The rawness is as mouthwatering as it’s namesake. One gains the sense that Briggs' engagement with the language of color has become his alternate dialect.

Rick Briggs, “I Love Painting + Painting Loves Me”, 2020, acrylic, oil stick, spray paint, paint rollers and collage on canvas, 55 x 60 inches.

The eponymous I Love Painting + Painting Loves Me, 2020, leans into a buoyancy to the point that I could not get away from reading the impaled paint rollers as the goggly eyes of a Muppet set in the mop-shaped pool of cerulean from which they protrude, to the point that once seen I could not unsee it.

Intersected by boldly applied bands of inky black lines that divide the canvas into quadrants. Layers of underpainting resolve into purple, red, green and yellow abutting quarters. A sheet of paper covered by evenly spaced dots of sprayed colors (could it be a diminutive take on Damien Hirst’s spots?), that Briggs picked off the studio floor, is prominently posted in the red square, while the yellow one below conceals the scrawled legend of the title as a ghostly residue. Briggs has transmuted the utilitarian attributes–as well as the physical implements–of his parallel work (working life). A residual effect being that I began taking notice of the faux window frames, on the fenestrations of abandoned buildings in my neighborhood, applied in a rudimentary flatness that served as witnesses to the echoes I carried away from the experience of encountering Briggs' pictures.

Array of photos by the author, including detail of “I Love Painting + Painting Loves Me” (upper left) in concert with a medley of faux painted ‘windows’ from the streets of Frankford, Philadelphia.

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• I have come across readings of Briggs' tag as having possibly been adapted from Joseph Beuys' quip of a title (for the performance piece also referred to as "Coyote") I Like America and America Likes Me - that is, obviously, erroneous. However this spin, understandably, keeps the onus of attribution in the hermetic confines of the art world. WM

Rick Briggs: I Love Painting + Painting Loves Me
Satchel Projects
526 West 26th Street #913, New York, NY
April 10–May 10, 2025