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I Thought About It in My Head and I Felt It in My Heart but I Made It with My Hands
Rob Ryan’s art—delicate, colorful, playful, and evocative—brings sophisticated layers of emotion to simple vignettes with universal appeal.
In this, the first book of his collected artwork, Rob Ryan combines a childlike enthusiasm for color and craft with a romantic’s compulsion to explore love, desire, fantasy, and melancholy. Working principally in papercuts and stencils, and often mixing startling artistry with a raconteur’s turn of phrase, he is able to craft an entire world within his artwork—from the slender and telling movement of characters in his narratives to the gentle complexity of fantastical flora and fauna in his irreverent silhouettes. Each work—whether it’s a stand-alone screen print, a single papercut from one of his intoxicating children’s stories, or design objects from egg cups to Victorian–style porcelain dog figurines—is a fairy tale in itself.
Bright and engaging, and edited in close collaboration with the artist, this beautiful monograph brings together work from every facet of Ryan’s career to date, and—through an accompanying text written specially for the book—explores the themes, styles, palettes, and preoccupations present throughout. Playing on familiar oppositions of isolation and creativity, alienation and warmth, even innocence and experience, Ryan’s work strikes the perfect balance between humor and vulnerability, wit and wisdom.
In this, the first book of his collected artwork, Rob Ryan combines a childlike enthusiasm for color and craft with a romantic’s compulsion to explore love, desire, fantasy, and melancholy. Working principally in papercuts and stencils, and often mixing startling artistry with a raconteur’s turn of phrase, he is able to craft an entire world within his artwork—from the slender and telling movement of characters in his narratives to the gentle complexity of fantastical flora and fauna in his irreverent silhouettes. Each work—whether it’s a stand-alone screen print, a single papercut from one of his intoxicating children’s stories, or design objects from egg cups to Victorian–style porcelain dog figurines—is a fairy tale in itself.
Bright and engaging, and edited in close collaboration with the artist, this beautiful monograph brings together work from every facet of Ryan’s career to date, and—through an accompanying text written specially for the book—explores the themes, styles, palettes, and preoccupations present throughout. Playing on familiar oppositions of isolation and creativity, alienation and warmth, even innocence and experience, Ryan’s work strikes the perfect balance between humor and vulnerability, wit and wisdom.
- GenresArt
208 pages, Hardcover
Published June 5, 2018
2 people are currently reading
40 people want to read
About the author
Rob Ryan
42 books15 followersRob Ryan is a British Paper cutter artist who specialises in papercutting, screen-printing and drawing and painting. He is now most famous for his detailed paper cut outs. Ryan was born on 5th November,1962 in Cyprus to Irish parents Doris and Buddy Ryan who divorced in 1966. He is the youngest of three brothers and his father was an RAF mess hall officer. He studied at Trent Polytechnic and has a Master of Arts in printmaking from the Royal College of Art/ He graduated from the Royal College of Art in 1987.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
July 31, 2022
Rob Ryan is an amazingly creative person. His paper cuts are beautiful. They contain infinite amounts of the tiniest details. I can’t imagine the amount of time and patience involved in making each one from start to finish. It’s admirable. The attention to detail is mind blowing. I can’t even wrap my head around the amount of tiny stars or thin lines in each one. Each and every final piece of work is just unbelievable. 5 stars.
December 17, 2022
Beautiful paper cuts. The text is often a little too Hallmark for me, especially since there is 200 pages worth here. Probably would have been better for me to encounter all this art in my Instagram feed.
January 31, 2019
Halfway through reading it I bought a copy to give as a gift.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews