Richard Orme Flinn

Through sculpture, painting and photography, I have spent most of my life exploring the mysteries of what I find beautiful, meaningful or interesting. Anything I see or feel seems fair game for exploration and interpretation.

Meher Baba said that “To penetrate into the essence of all being and significance, and to release the fragrance of that inner attainment for the guidance and benefit of others, by expressing in the world of forms, truth, love, purity and beauty-this is the sole game which has any intrinsic and absolute worth. All other happenings, incidents and attainments can, in themselves, have no lasting importance.”

I'm nowhere close to those lofty goals, but it is endlessly fun trying.

Training

My formal studies were at Spring Street School and the Westminster Schools in Atlanta, GA, Davidson College, University of Montpellier in France, with the University of Maryland in programs in Italy and Germany, taking a Bachelor of Visual Arts degree and post graduate studies in photography at Georgia State University.

Experience

My work is in private collections throughout the United States and in Europe and Australia. As a student, I was included in several invitational shows at the Atlanta Dogwood Festival, the Georgia Museum of Art and the High Museum of Art in Atlanta.

As Restoration Director of Atlanta Landmarks, Inc, starting in 1976, I was responsible for a 16 year long project to restore the National Historic Landmark Fox Theatre in Atlanta, GA, and during the same period, I designed and supervised the restoration of several other historic and architecturally significant public and private buildings in Georgia, South Carolina and India, where I was invited to spend several months supervising the restoration of the Tomb-Shrine of Avatar Meher Baba, a 1930's domed structure decorated by the Swiss artist Helen Damm. Along the way I have designed or personally created everything from fine jewelry and clothing to furniture, carpets, interiors and architecture. Since 1999, I have been busy restoring a hotel and apartments in Paris, France, recreating missing interior elements and furnishing them with antiques to be rented short term to visitors.

Sculpture

After a long hiatus from sculpture, in the mid 1990's I reconnected with my passion for this art form while attending studio sessions with Martin Dawe at his Cherrylion Sculpture Studio in Atlanta. I sculpt in clay from live models, and the finished pieces are either the original clay, fired and painted, or limited edition castings in bronze or bonded marble or bronze. I had a one-man show at the Cherrylion Gallery in 2003, and have done commissioned work for several clients.

Painting

My interest in painting has manifested in many stylistic experiments. For the past several years I have been working abstractly, expressing emotion non-literally through line, shape and color, in direct contrast to the representational approach I take in working with live models for sculpture. My paintings draw inspiration from traditions of Hindu, Buddhist, Islamic, Roman and Renaissance decorative art forms. I also create assemblages that combine sculpture and painting, resembling deranged reliquaries.

Photography

Photography has been a constant accompaniment and compliment to my other artistic pursuits. I make pictures to document my work, to record images that inspire me, and to create images of interest and beauty in and of themselves. With the advent of the digital age and the magic of Photoshop, I sometimes manipulate pixels to better reflect what I felt when making the picture, taking the image beyond the hard visual facts that the camera recorded when the shutter clicked. In 2011 I was asked to create a series of images for an exhibition in Skopje, Macedonia, documenting the original creations of Macedonia's leading designer, Nikola Eftimov.