Ryan's WEBSITE

Ryan Cummings has always known he wanted to be an artist. He drew comics in elementary school, studied art and focused on pen and ink sketching in high school, and attended the North Carolina State University School of Design (now College of Design) where he tried photography, sculpture, graphic design, and painting.  He loved all of it, but wasn’t sure he could make a living from doing what he loved.

He began learning decorative wall finishes in the Triangle area, he then moved to Florida in 2000 to improve his painting skills and worked for a respected husband and wife duo in the Palm Beach area, applying decorative finishes - including plasters, faux finishes, and murals - to the mansions along the coast. He has his own company now here in Raleigh and has left his mark at the Flying Biscuit restaurant in Cameron Village.

Ryan, a North Carolina native, found that painting the Florida landscapes favored by area clients led him to study landscapes and natural elements in ways he hadn’t done before.  He began studying classic landscape paintings for inspiration and fresh perspectives.  Working from sketches and photos he paints landscapes by incorporating two styles of painting. First a representational style to depict the sky and part of the ground and then a layering process of square shaped areas of different sizes, textures, colors, and specific imagery to create a truly complete portrait of the land.

Primarily it’s the inclusion of vintage black and white photos of people who have occupied the land over the last 115 yrs that completes the portrait of the landscape- we see what the past residents wore in the 1890s, what their homes looked like in the 1930s, or what they drove in the 1950s as they lived in the same region at different points in time over the last century.

 “The people in the photographs I use in my paintings show the human part of the history of that place,”  says Ryan.  Just recently Ryan was accepted as a member of the  Artist Association at Artspace here in Raleigh.

Ryan's WEBSITE