Tuesday, September 3, 2019

Richard Streitmatter-Tran: Artist-in-Residence

Richard Streitmatter-Tran, watercolor painting on silk
Stop by Richard Streitmatter-Tran’s Open Studio any Wednesday, and you will find a dozen projects underway.  Silk stretched over reclaimed frames.  Sketches and studies stuck against the wall.  Plates covered with watercolor portraits.  Woodshavings from a giant marionette arm he carves by hand.

“When people come, I want them to see something happening, not just a finished work,” he explains.  “I want visitors to see a working studio, a work in progress.” Piles of books on New England art – from impressionist painters to photographers – cover other tables, where he browses them for inspiration.  It’s very easy to become caught up in his enthusiasm for these projects – it’s as if everything he sees sparks a new idea.

Born in Vietnam, Richard came to America when he was adopted at 8 months old.  He grew up on Cape Cod in what he calls a “working class New England family.”

“Cape Cod is a time capsule,” he says, “where they still have soda fountains and AM/FM radios.”  He spent his formative years surrounded by the artwork of New England greats, including Winslow Homer and Edward Hopper.  “I’m very fond of Edward Hopper, his paintings of Cape Ann.  There’s places I grew up that still look like that.”

Sketches for future portraits
Richard attended the Studio for Interrelated Media (SIM) at Mass College of Art, where he studied new media, performance, and immaterial work.  “I had a strong conceptual basis, but I couldn’t draw a stick figure,” he laughs.  At first, this wasn’t a problem – the ideas he developed could be manufactured in other ways – “but it didn’t feel like it was really expressive of my own self.”

After graduating, he taught art, and was soon asked to develop a drawing course.  With no practical experience, he taught himself to draw, starting with the basics.  “It was slow, but there was pleasure in the incremental improvement,” he says.  “I started doing more work with my hands.  Sculpture comes naturally to me, painting and drawing is still more of a struggle.”

In 2003, he moved to Vietnam, where he has built most of his artistic practice.  As a working artist, he has presented in Asia and Europe, but never before in America.  “Part of this residency is coming back home,” he says, jokingly referring to himself as “the prodigal son.”

Richard's diptych, "Inconsolable" and "Crushed,"
acrylic on muslin, will be on display at the
Worcester Pop-Up Exhibition
“Lately I’ve been working with watercolor on metal and silk.  I thought it would be pleasant to come visit the New England greats, try to reconcile their techniques with my work now.”  He quickly learned that the thick watercolors of Homer and John Singer Sargent didn’t work on silk – “if you load it up, it drips through” – but he nevertheless tries new ideas every day.

One thing he hopes to emulate is the timeless nature of Hopper’s paintings, creating something that in fifty years will still feel distinctly Worcester.  “I’m not sure how I’ll accomplish that yet.  I don’t want to be too obvious.”

He also has two projects inspired by a recent trip to a Thailand studio: a sketch of a sarong, currently being developed into a large diptych partly inspired by the depiction of clothing and form in John Singer Sargent’s portraits of the elites; and the enormous marionette arm, a scaled up version of one from Thailand, which he is carving from pieces of an old fence by his family home, which was torn down in a recent storm.  “I love the grey of the pine when it’s been exposed to the salt air,” he says.  “It’s a very Cape Cod look.”

You can see Richard Streitmatter-Tran's work at any of the following events:
  • Tropical/Temerate Exhibition @ the Worcester Pop-Up (20 Franklin Street); Wednesday, September 11, 6-9 PM 
  • Saturday Open Studio (Worcester Art Museum); Saturday, September 14, 12-2 PM
  • StART on the Street (Park Avenue); Sunday, September 15
  • Third Thursday Artist Talk (Worcester Art Museum); Thursday, September 19, 6-8 PM

-- Sarah Leveille
Digital Content Specialist
September 3, 2019