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Rick Millward was first attracted to the airbrush while in college at the University of Oregon. The noted artist Paul Sarkesian was in residence and doing large photorealistic murals at the time and it was through this association that Rick started doing freehand airbrush paintings. His images are influenced by Pop Art but by playing with figure/ground relationships and color mapping he goes beyond the object and enters a realm somewhere between realism and abstraction.
At one point Rick abandoned painting and pursued a commercial art career that came to fruitiion when he discovered the computer and it's ability to emulate airbrush technique. Rick was an "early adopter" and enjoyed a career as a video paintbox artist in Silicon Valley that continued to the end of the Tech Boom in the late '90s.
These works are essentially post pop portraits, but approached with a whimsical and expressionist style that flirts with photo-realism. By attaching the actual emblems from the vehicles the paintings gain a realistic reference point that counters the painterly and decidedly "un-real" depiction of the subject. This seemingly simple element creates a tension that is felt, triggering feelings of nostalgia, and memory. It helps too that the paintings are life size adding to the illusion of reality.
This series has 13 works and are currently being shown at 417 Union Restaurant, Nashville