About the Artist
RicEpley
Model/ Athlete/ Researcher/ Photographer/ Entrepreneur/ Academic/ Artist
An unconventional polymath who exploded color onto canvas after a life spent on runways, courts, and continents.
Biography
Abstract painter Ric Epley has a diverse and broad background — (Evansville Living Magazine, 2012). After graduating from the University of Southern Indiana in Evansville, Indiana, where he grew up, he lived and worked as a fashion model across France, Germany, Sweden, and Norway before returning to the US, signing with agencies including Karin Men Models, Stockholmsgruppen, and Team Modeler, and working for clients such as Hermès, Gaultier, Ralph Lauren, NASCAR, and Schwinn, among many others. While in Europe he also played basketball for Élan Sportif de Paris in France and Klubb Patricia in Sweden. He was part of a team of the original researchers for SATSA, a now decades-long longitudinal monozygotic twin study at the renowned Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Sweden.
Subsequently returning to the United States for good, Epley became involved in photography (Miller Beer, RJR Reynolds, The Wildhorse Saloon, plus 100s of aspiring and working models) and outdoor advertising (Coca-Cola, Chicago Blackhawks, WWE) in both media and creative and account management. Later, he started his own small multimedia company, www.FusionNewMedia.com, which quickly garnered such clients as Sony, Eli Lilly and Company, The Ryman Auditorium, WSM Radio, and The Grand Ole Opry, to name a few.
Today, Epley, an unconventional polymath, continues to act as president of Fusion New Media. He holds a Master of Arts Degree in Interactive Design and is an authority on technology and the stress it produces — www.tech-stress.net. A devoted and hands-on single father, Epley occasionally dreams in Swedish and is self-described as “marginally conversational” in French. He is the inspiration for a recurring character in longtime friend Thyme Lewis’s MacGuffin book series.
His foray into abstract art was initially cathartic and completely unintentional. “I nearly failed my high school art class. Realism is not my style, but I wanted it to be then”, he recalls. “Abstract suits me perfectly. I am humbled and grateful by the very warm commercial reception I’ve experienced as an autodidactic artist”. Epley’s insatiable curiosity keeps him ever experimenting with new artistic methods and directions.
An Unusually Indirect Route
Runways in Paris, Hamburg, and Stockholm. Professional basketball in France and Sweden. Twin research at the Karolinska Institutet. Ric Epley came to painting late, and by way of almost everything else.
modeling.jpg‘}))”>A decade in front of the camera for clients including Hermès, Gaultier, and Ralph Lauren. The eye for color and proportion came first; the paint came later.
Paris, weari Hermès. Photograph by Rudi Klein.
HoopParis.jpg‘}))”>Before the studio there were courts. Those long Scandinavian winters are the ones he would return to decades later in the Nordic Series.
Photograph by Nikolai Jakobsen.
ric-at-work.jpg‘}))”>Completely self taught, working in series, building each canvas in layers of color, collage, and scraped paint until the subject is exhausted.
Photograph courtesy of Evansville Living.
In Their Words
His works were called “ALIVE!”
Katrin Jakobsen — noted German-born Parisian artist
(Epley’s)… paintings are very intense and exhibit a sensuality rarely seen in abstract art!
The Daily Grind — Los Angeles
His colors explode onto the canvas…!
Ralph Dane — GETDOWNARTblog, 2010
Charismatic and very confident but humble and approachable all at once — qualities reflected perfectly in his art.
Dorian Smith — The South Pacific Art Institute
Collected
Ric Epley Art hangs in homes and businesses around the world.
◆ United States ◆ Europe ◆ Australia ◆ Canada