About the Artist

My father, Don Ricks, was the son of an Idaho turkey farmer. He dreamed of becoming an artist, but instead chose to remain in a small town in southeast Idaho to raise his seven children—four boys and three girls. He became a sign painter, and as we grew up, we all worked in the family business.

When my father was forty, he met Sergei Bongart, who had escaped Kyiv, Ukraine after World War II. That meeting changed everything.

My dad and my three brothers all became professional artists. I was the youngest and the least interested in art. At seventeen, I started a picture frame company that later became Allman-Ricks Master Frame Makers. By the time I turned forty, a chain of events—including the attacks of September 11—moved me to follow the artistic path that had shaped my family for generations.

Up to that point, I was constantly chasing larger and more elaborate projects. A deep restlessness drove me, and it began to affect my business. Painting became my solution. In front of the easel, I found something I hadn’t known I was missing—a sense of home and peace.

I have often reflected on whether an artist is formed by nature or nurture. Surely there is something shared among family members, not only in temperament but in the daily exposure to the making of art. Around our dinner table, discussions about what made or broke a painting were common. I also believe there is a kind of spiritual fraternity that connects artists—both living and long gone.

In 2010, I made the first of several trips to Ukraine and Russia. In Kyiv, I visited the National Academy of Art and Architecture and reintroduced the faculty to Sergei through a book about his life and work, Sergei Bongart by Mary Balcomb. In 2015, I returned with another copy for the academy, which had very few pre-war photographs. By 2017, the professors had reconstructed much of Sergei’s early education, tracing it to two brothers who had taught at the academy and shaped his training.

My last trip to Ukraine was in 2018. I have always felt a deep connection to Kyiv. In May of 2023, one of my dear Ukrainian friends was killed in the brutal fighting near Bakhmut. Today, I am involved in several projects that raise funds for soldiers and refugee families. One foundation, “To Ukraine With Love,” builds modular homes on the foundations of houses destroyed in the war.

In February 2017, while in St. Petersburg, I visited a remarkable artist in his studio, located in a district filled with ateliers. Later that night, around 10:30 p.m., I walked out into one of the world’s great cities. It felt as though the entire place had been built in pursuit of beauty. Standing along the Neva River, I watched the reflections of the Hermitage Museum shimmer in the breaking ice. Sheets of snow-covered ice drifted past glowing currents of light, creating passages of extraordinary color and atmosphere. Turning to my two midnight companions—a taxi driver and a coffee vendor—I asked, “How many nights like this are in a man’s life?”

Only the fates can answer.

Some time ago, I coined a phrase that I believe captures my life as an artist:

“Art is a journey of discovery and transformation… You never know where it might lead. Start the journey.”

Martin Edwin Ricks
May 21, 2023