Ed Ribeiro

“One of the principal ways we can change our relationship to difficult art is by repetition. An unpleasant piece of music may, the sixth or seventh time we listen, reveal new beauty. If we study one of Josef Albers's seemingly simple paintings of different colored squares, the colors start to shift. Of course, difficulty doesn't always give way to revelation - sometimes what follows is, alas, frustration. But when it does, we get that additional sense of satisfaction: The arduous ascent has been rewarded with a panoramic view.” Ed Ribeiro has a very distinctive style of painting. When I first saw some of his painting I was curiohttp://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=8282344763617306649us to see what else he had done and was unsure what my opinion was on his works. It looked as if he had put a bunch of colors on a canvas and took something that reminded me of a chalk holder that could hold 5 pieces of chalk so I could make a music scale and dragged it across the still wet paint. As i continue to look at the works of Ed Ribeiro, I start to see things that could lead me to see the significance of the painting. As simple as it seems, getting those line right and exactly the way he wants it takes talent and patience. Something that looked like a simple blob of different colored paint with lines slowly starts to take shape.

    Ed Ribeiro was born in Sao Sebastiao de Passe, Brazil. His birth name is Edmilton Ribeiro, he was one of 17 children born to a poor family, believes that everyone should help the less fortunate, and he is also very religious, which appears in many of his works. Above, is his version of Christ on the Cross. It almost takes a second for on to realize what the painting is actually supposed to be, then even longer to determine what all the colors and blurs are meant to be. The white is the cloth he was wearing around his waist, the dripping red, blood, the brown, His hair, and the yellow, the crown of thorns the Roman forced upon his head. The way the paint is dripping and creates an almost disturbing blurred image serves as a gateway to the severity of the occasion being portrayed. The most blurred and obstructed part of this work is Christ's face, causing us to not know what he really looks like but it also creates a haunting unknown aspect of which we are forced to look upon.
   Almost all of Ed Ribeiro's works are done in the this fashion, you can tell what it is supposed to be but when you try to depict the details of the painting, it gets confusing and blurry. At first glance, these works may look simple, and perhaps they may be, but it is the grace and aspect of the unknown, the undefined, that attracts me to Ed Ribeiro's work. 
(Posted by Sarah)