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About Me

Art is hopeful. In a world that distorts and diminishes, art is the force that lifts us above the noise — toward something truer, more luminous, more human. My studio in Lodi, Ohio is where that pursuit becomes real: a space where I bear my vulnerabilities on canvas and paper, and where simplicity and expression, and beauty converge.

I paint portraits and landscapes. My portraits are faces of people who inspire me, whose lives and struggles and visions remind me why this work matters. My landscapes come from our local parks and the countryside around me, because I paint what I see here and try to represent Medina County as well as I can. Through watercolor, acrylic, and dry media, I seek an honesty of mark that mirrors an honesty of intention. I also make prints (intaglio, wood, and linocut) at Zygote Press in Cleveland, and I write poetry. Each piece is an act of witness as much as craft.

I hold a BFA in painting from The University of Akron (1983), where a university-sponsored work study took me to Franklin Furnace in New York City. My engagement with art history continues to inform how I see and what I make. Before devoting myself to the studio, I worked for advertising agencies and as an illustrator for The Gazette. I continue to study, most recently in Intermediate Drawing with Kit Palencar at the Cuyahoga Valley Art Center, and I serve as treasurer of the Medina County Art League.

During the pandemic, I painted small floral watercolors and mailed them to friends as encouragement. As winter set in, I turned to a series of studies of one old barn through the seasons, and later to night scenes lit by a moon that stood for hope. Those works became my show Painting Through the Pandemic. In 2024, Icons brought together 34 portraits of the writers, musicians, actors, and historical figures who have shaped my thinking.

My work has also found a home on public walls. In 2023, I was invited to create artwork for the front entrance of the Medina County Home: an 8-by-4-foot barn-at-sunset mural, my first, and two watercolors, one of the Home's historic building and one of a peacock. The residents stopped to talk while I painted, and that made the project even better.

In 2025, that creative vision extended into a new form with the publication of Irpin's Big Adventure, a children's book I authored and illustrated, and which was named a finalist in the 2026 Moonbeam Children's Book Awards. It is storytelling as another way of reaching toward the hopeful.

Shows & Exhibitions

Solo

  • 2024: Icons, Frank B. Smith Gallery, Medina Library, Medina, OH
  • 2022: Floral Watercolor show at Lodi Libary, Lodi, Ohio
  • 2021: Painting Through the Pandemic, Frank B. Smith Gallery, Medina Library, Medina, OH
  • 2021: Views of Lodi show at Lodi Libary, Lodi, Ohio

Juried Shows

Commissions and Installations

  • 2023: Medina County Home, Lafayette Township, OH: barn mural (8' x 4') and two watercolors, the Home's facade and a peacock

Publications and Honors

Podcasts

Orville Public Libary's 5th Local Author Festival Author interviews https://open.spotify.com/episode/47GNNfMipKT8zz1xtZJHG7?si=q47XsujCSAGoNVMlNNA1ZA

Press

Brad Rice