In This Way: Interview
with Will Ryman

This conversation between Judith Murray and Will Ryman took place in New York on October 28, 2024. Will Ryman is an artist living and working in New York City.
WR: I have known you for a long time because you were a close friend of my parents. I have always felt that your paintings have had a presence for me, so I am glad to have this opportunity to ask you some questions. Could you to talk a little bit about your early days as an artist. What about painting spoke to you? Was it a need to do? What inspired you to begin art? How did all this happen?
JM: I was one of those children that was single directed, and I knew I wanted to be a painter from an extremely young age. I had an illness when I was eight years old that left me bedridden for many months. During that time, I was sent a gift of an oil painting kit. From the moment I received it, I fell in love with oil paint. I’ve been an oil painter ever since.
WR: So, when you discovered oil paints, did somebody show you what to do? How to technically handle the material?
JM: Not really, because children are given art supplies way before that. What I loved about oil paint is that it has a physical presence so, if I was painting flowers, the flowers stand out from the canvas board. It became like a sculptural element that has interested me all these years. My paintings are physical. They have a kind of sculptural quality even though it is on a canvas.
WR: Absolutely. So, you started painting as a child, was that a way to help you through your illness?
JM: Painting was a way out from being bedridden as I was not allowed to walk. The doctors called it “Virus-X”. Don’t forget when I was a child, it was before penicillin was widely available, so I don’t think they really knew what it was or how to treat it. It was also something that kept me psychologically independent from my family.
WR: I think that is the best way to seek out a creative medium, is to seek out freedom. Was your work figurative at first or was it abstract?
JM: They were landscapes, boats, portraits, copied from photographs…much later, I went to Pratt Institute, and that’s when I learned about oil paint. I had a wonderful mentor at Pratt, Walter Murch. That was the late 50s, early 60s and I would go to galleries and look at the abstract expressionist painters, the New York School. Ad Reinhardt’s paintings were a tremendous influence on me.
WR: In what way?
JM: Coming from Florida, I had not been exposed to paintings except mostly in books of the Impressionists. Then in New York, seeing Reinhardt’s extremely subtle black paintings that at the same time were so powerful, made me realize that it’s about finding your own way. Not following necessarily anything that is given from looking at books.
WR: Was that a turning point in your work?
JM: Definitely. That was 1958, the year I started Pratt Institute.
WR: At what point did you decide that your life would be about painting?
JM: I thought that as a child. I was a painter. I was an artist. But 1958 is when I became an abstract painter. By the 1970s I started doing my early black paintings, which were eccentric forms, very precise, on a black field, and only made up of four distinct colors: red, black, white, and yellow.
WR: How did you arrive at those? And why were these four colors important to your work? How did that happen?
JM: It was a conscious decision. I felt those were the colors of all time, of all people, and those were my colors. I sensed that they had longevity of exploration for me. I’ve travelled to remote places in Asia. I’ve trekked in the Amazon jungle to villages. Every place I went there was always art being made, or crafts, and it was always these four colors. And then I saw a cave art exhibit at the Museum of Natural History, and they had examples of the pigments used, and it was these four colors. Whether it was my intuition, or they came from my experiences, the universal quality and how they could keep expanding drew me to them. I feel no sense of limitation because 50 years later these four colors keep expanding in possibilities.
WR: Which is why it is interesting that every painting you do is different and yet they are painted with the same four colors.
JM: I want each of the paintings to have their own identity. The consistent things throughout all of my paintings are those colors and the right-hand bar.

Judith Murray, Dark Before Light, 1998, oil on canvas, 96" × 108"
WR: The bar always stands out to me. When did that bar come into your work and why?
JM: The bar came in at the same time as the four colors. It was in the 70s. The bar is multifaceted as there is always a dialogue between the bar and the rest of the painting. It is a spatial element as it goes from top to bottom so it’s the farthest forward, and everything else is moving against this static element.
WR: Do you commit to using the bar in every painting now?
JM: It’s the first thing I draw, the width varies depending on the painting. I measure it out and I’m committed; I’m in that painting only. As the painting develops, I might make the bar wider, or I might make it thinner.
WR: The bar is your signature, isn’t it?
JM: Right! The bar started with the black paintings in my first studio. I have had three important studios. My first studio was in the seaport area on Pearl Street. In that studio, I had a view of the East River, and I knew the tides; I knew the boat traffic. That was important to me. Jock Truman from Betty Parsons Gallery came to my studio, and he really liked my paintings. There must have been an open spot in the gallery, because he gave me a show one month later. This was in 1976 at Parsons-Truman Gallery on 57th Street.
​
WR: Was that your first exhibition?
JM: I consider it my first show. After that Betty Parsons and I became friends. From this show, I got a full page write up in the SOHO Weekly News with a big title, “A Non-Conformist Painter”, and a blurb in the New Yorker. The show was mostly medium sized paintings, and one large painting, and that one sold. I remember turning to friends saying, “Gee it’s not so hard!” What a joke!
WR: Do you want to talk about what success is as an artist?
JM: Very fleeting. There are moments of elation and then you really have to be self-motivated. When I start focusing on a new work, that’s success.
WR: When did you move to your next studio?
JM: After my building on Pearl Street was sold, I moved to a larger space on Broadway between Houston and Prince. There I started doing the six-foot paintings. Having this larger space allowed me to make larger paintings. I loved the physicalness of working large. I was there for about ten years and then I was evicted. The landlord wanted to get me out of my studio so he could raise the rent, and I fought it under the auspices that this was my primary residence which it was. The judge would not accept it because he said, “a wife lives with her husband.” He judged against me even though we proved we always had two separate, primary residences. In 1990 I moved to my present studio.
WR: So, after that, did your work change?
JM: It wasn’t necessarily the move, but time that changed my work, you can’t keep repeating yourself. Working in my realm, four colors, right side bar, off square, the paintings started transitioning into more evolved and complex shapes, textures, glazing, and became much more expressive. The works also got larger. There I made the first eight-by-nine-foot painting, Dark Before Light, without any expectations I’d ever have to move it out of my studio. Since then, I have made about twenty more.
WR: So, in this book we’ll see an arch of your work, from the beginning to now?
JM: Yes! From late 70s to the painting that I’ve just finished in 2024.
____________________________________
WILL RYMAN is a New York-based artist widely recognized for his sculptures and public art installations. He is represented by CHART, New York.