Ryan Kapp

When I was growing up I always lived in bizarre suburbs in the middle of nowhere. The neighborhoods my family lived in were bordered by farms filled with cows or corn. We never walked on sidewalks or stopped at stop lights. There were never any street lamps...the upside of which was that the sky was left open to the stars. My brother and I generally had a couple of friends who lived in our neighborhood, but we were surrounded by people who were either long since retired, or single adults without any kids. At the time, I wanted to live in a "normal" suburban neighborhood, like the ones described in Beverly Cleary novels, or featured on the show Pete and Pete, where there were lots of kids who all got together every day to play games and create elaborate schemes.

When I went to college I found a neighborhood that adjoined the backside of the campus that was exactly like the places I had imagined as a child. There were big oak and maple trees, little mid-century houses, yards with little gardens, quirky old ladies peering out from behind rose bushes, and people walking their dogs. I used to walk around the neighborhood when I wanted a break from campus life, and particularly liked walking around at night so that I could see how people decorated their homes, which maybe is a little odd, but I thought it was interesting to see how differently people could make the same houses feel, with different design sensibilities.

I'm happy to say that I wasn't disillusioned by the neighborhood. We all learn about the downsides of suburbia, the tedium and boredom, the cookie cutter nature of everything from houses to cars, the disfunctionalism covered up by conformity. While I think the critique of the suburbs if generally right, I didn't see that disturbing discontent in the neighborhood behind my school, I just saw relatively happy families and the interesting things they placed along their windowsills.

Ryan Kapp's paintings remind me of that neighborhood. He paints houses lit up from the inside, so that we can see their interiors and furnishings. His paintings have amazing colors, great moods, and a graphic sensibility. They remind me of the simplicity of Charlie Harper combined with the moody voyeurism of Edward Hopper...which all turns out to be nostalgic but modern and hip at the same time.

I think it's interesting that Ryan's paintings of houses never have people in them. They almost seem a little haunted, and make me feel like I'm more concerned with furniture than people...which maybe our culture is to a point. On the other hand, when I was walking around the neighborhood behind my college at night, I rarely saw people in the front rooms that lined the street, people seemed to be tucked away towards the backs of their homes, so Ryan's paintings seem realistic in that way.

Ryan grew up in Ohio and got his MFA at Northwestern University, and I can feel the Midwest in his paintings. He's currently teaching at Harrington College of Design in Chicago. You can check out more of his work at his website, and buy his paintings at Beholder.

P.S. I also love Ryan's paintings of skateboarders...they remind me of my little brother learning to skate on our wooden back porch, and hearing the wheels go clunkclunkclunkclunkityclunk for hours on end, and later being able to distinguish skaters coming up behind me on city streets from the distinctive clunk of wheels running over cracks in the sidewalk.