Ryan Crotty

Diesel Fumes, 2025
Acrylic, gloss gel, and modeling paste on linen

Ryan Crotty lives and works in Auburn, Nebraska. He earned his BFA in painting from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and his MFA in painting from Syracuse University.

Each painting consists of the same three transparent pigments— Phthalo blue, Quinacridone red, and Hansa yellow light— suspended in gloss gel medium and applied over a primed linen surface. Built up in successive layers, the varying densities of pigment and medium interact optically, generating an infinite spectrum of secondary and tertiary hues. The layering destabilizes the foreground and background, creating a hazy optical field in works like “Diesel Fumes”.

Working in his studio in rural Nebraska, Crotty is surrounded by an expanse of open sky, farmland, and horizon where weather and light shift with an almost cinematic intensity. Using a series of rigs and hand-crafted tools of his own design, Crotty orchestrates controlled pulls and gestures that blur the line between touch and automation.

The luminous planes and contours suggest light structures that might belong as much to circuitry or code as to landscape or atmosphere. Their origins are obscured and the trace of the artist’s hand is present, yet mediated, translated through the mechanisms of his tools.