Art has been a part of Wayne Anthony Rice’s life since he can remember. His father was a metal sculptor and his grandfather was a jeweler and jewelry designer. He spent his summers traveling with his family to art shows, experiencing art and artists of all kinds. Rice's first formal experience with abstract art was through his father who had been commissioned to build a large wall sculpture out of steel. He watched every step of him building it and to this day it is still one of the most memorable and impactful experiences of his creative life. Straight vertical lines flowed into organic and powerful horizontal shapes washed in a blue-red patina on the steel. It was what a peal of thunder might look like and it mesmerized him. His Godfather introduced him to photography and through his wonderful artistic guidance it became the medium he would embrace his whole life. Once exposed to the mystery inside that frame and lens he was never the same.
Mountain top overlooking the city of Hong Kong
He earned a Bachelors degree in art from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo California and went on to work in film and media production for clients such as Intel and LucasFilm Ltd., until a moment on a mountain top in China changed his creative life. It was while photographing the city of Hong Kong that his affinity for the abstract expressed itself in a most impactful way. He realized the images he was capturing of the city as a whole, on its own, were not expressing what he needed to say. He began to see in a new way. The images of the skyscrapers and city streets became raw material made of time and place, which he then abstracted into new compositions. His years of film production informed the development of a process of exploring captured moments in time beyond their record, abstracting them into flights of the imagination. This process of seeing the abstractions has informed every work he has created since that moment on the mountain top and it is what informs his newest series Artificial Reality.
SELECTED SHOWS
"13th Annual Small Works Show, Juried Show, Graton Gallery, Graton CA, Oct 3 - Nov 10, 2024"North Star Gala 2024 Juried Auction, Sebastopol Center For The Arts Sebastopol CA Sep., 2024
“Abstract” International Juried Show Sebastopol Center For The Arts Sebastopol CA June 18, 2022 - July 24, 2022
“Monumental” International Juried Show Sergio Gomez Curates Dec 1, 2021 - Jan 31, 2022