His personal artist website is http://www.richardsalvucci.com/
Richard Salvucci was included in UVA’s Healthful exhibition.
Artist Statement
My interest in becoming an artist has its roots in a mountain trip with my grandparents in 1967. Along the
way we stopped at a drug store for lunch. Close by was a round metal rack of comic books. My
grandmother bought me, “Tales to Astonish #85”, featuring the Incredible Hulk. That moment was the beginning of my love for “larger than life” stories, especially the illustrations telling those stories. The mixture of the ‘fantastic’, along with the ability of the comic book artists at drawing the human figure, were the strongest impressions of my childhood. They would fire my imagination and especially my desire to learn to draw.
Over the next few years I began tracing comic book characters, then drawing them freehand. I also
developed a strong interest in drawing animals and birds.
After graduating from the Massachusetts College of Art with a BFA in 1978, I became a freelance illustrator
producing magazine illustrations and especially covers for science fiction and fantasy books. During this period I shared studio space in Boston with Tom Canty, Rick Berry and Phil Hale, all of whom would continue in the field of fantasy.
In the early 1990s I attended an exhibit at Boston’s Museum of Science of artists who specialized in nature
and wildlife. For many years after that show I painted scenes of nature, particularly animals and birds. I
worked with the Massachusetts Audubon Society and the Manomet Bird Observatory and exhibited in many
New England shows at the Bennington Center for the Arts, the Cape Cod Museum of Natural History and
the Vermont Institute of Natural Science.
Today, however, I find it too confining and static to stay within one genre. I have an eclectic interest in
subject matter, whether working as an illustrator or painter. Although I’m primarily a realist, I enjoy
experimenting with different styles and formulating new ways of ‘seeing’.
My favorite mediums are oils, tempera, gouache, pencil and occasionally ink. I’ve also worked with many
other mediums including acrylics, pastels, colored pencil, conte crayon, and lithography.