Second Place Award of Excellence

The San Diego Museum of Art Artists Guild

2023 Fall Membership Exhibition

November 14 – November 27, 2023
Live at Gallery 21, Spanish Village, Balboa Park, San Diego, CA
Online during the month of November 2023:
www.sdmaag.org/2023-Fall-Exhibition    

Juror: Katie Dolgov, Director of Exhibitions and Collections
Oceanside Museum of Art

Congratulations to our

Second Place Award of Excellence Winner 

True Ryndes

 True was awarded the second place for his Acrylic on Gallery-wrapped Canvas
ORIGIN.

About True:

In my early twenties, I periodically meditated with a community at the Northhampton Zen Center in Massachusetts. I remember asking the roshi “how can you spend so much time doing shikantaza (just sitting) when there is so much suffering in the world?” “It is a dilemma,” he said, “but I have no option.” His response helped me understand I had the option to be an artist but no option when it came to serving those who suffered, so I embarked on what was to become a 40-year career caring for and learning from the terminally ill. During that time, I often looked enviously at the lives of friends who had taken the artist’s path. Upon my retirement from hospice in 2007, I immediately began taking classes in painting, imagining I would be creating large loose-brushed landscapes. Instead, what emerged—and has always felt “true”—were precise geometric compositions whose asymmetric balance and color harmonies served a poetic narrative.

About ORIGIN:

I take great interest in tying my own explorations to those of artists in the past, but recently have had cause to redefine the idea of “past.” Work of early humans has been discovered in two cave complexes in South Africa: Blombas and Rising Star. Photographs of First Artist “toolkits” and hard-edged engravings (reliably dated at 73,000 years before present) then the geometric markings believed to be associated with burial chambers of H. naledi (ca, 240,000 BP) have been staggering. They showed intersecting straight lines arranged into patterns, tens of thousands of years before figurative drawings appeared on cave walls.

Origin, the painting on exhibit, came out of a reverie about the breakthrough moments of higher order consciousness and visual organizing that resulted in those early intentional markings. The thin line of interference paint, now part of my “endless thread” vocabulary, first appeared here.”

What important exhibitions have you participated in?

As you can see on my website (www.trueryndes.com), I have exhibited in numerous solo and group shows in San Diego County over the past 15 years. While each has been important to me, one that stands out was the spirited group show at the Poway Center for the Performing Arts in October 2021. The Center had had a sudden cancellation, and the space was offered to Guild artists. It was a bit of a scramble but we all yearned for normalcy. Artist Arun Prem provided the title Re-Emergence, reflecting art and artists returning to a public space after a long absence.