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NOW A BOOK, AVAILABLE FROM AMAZON.COM
KINDLE--$1.99
CLICK HERE: SKELETON KEY to the SUICIDE of MY FATHER ROSS LOCKRIDGE Jr. AUTHOR of RAINTREE COUNTY
FIRST PLACE High Road Gallery Exhibit, "Spice of Life," March 6, 2011
 Still Life is a contradiction in terms. Nature is kinetic , overflowing with living designs. By mimesis and imagination the artist participates organically in this ongoing creation.
Making art is a journey of discovery, an exhilarating treasure hunt. My paintings aspire to serve as humble pieces in the Great Puzzle, and to provide a modicum of comfort and happiness.
During 2007-8, my paintings appeared in a number of exhibits: at Worthington's HIGH ROAD GALLERY; the JungHaus (Columbus, Ohio); Columbus's First Unitarian Unitarian Church; the Dublin, Ohio, Art Fair; the Worthington First Methodist Church; the Arlington, Ohio, First Community Church; the Grove City, Ohio, Municipal building; and The Ohio State University's Northwood ArtSpace ("The Pet Show," July12-August 31, 2007).
"Blue Eyes" won Honorable Mention at the High Road Gallery show "The Bare Essentials, Studies in the Human Form," October 3-27, sponsored by the Worthington Area Art League (WAAL).
"Park of Roses," PEOPLE'S CHOICE AWARD Spring Anthem Exhibit
"Lost in Iceland" and "Saffron Robe," OHIO STATE FAIR, July 30-August 10, 2008.
Solo Exhibits 2007-8:
1. "WINTER DREAMS," November 13, 2007-January 14, 2008, Worthington Community Center, sponsored by the WORTHINGTON ARTS COUNCIL.
2. "BURNING BRIGHT," Market Mortgage, Worthington, Ohio, February, 2008, sponsored by WAAL.
3. "SPRING FORWARD," Northwood ArtSpace, The Ohio State University, April 3-June 1, 2008.
4. "SUMMERTIME," The Ohio State University FACULTY CLUB, June 9-August 31, 2008.
5. "ARE WE THERE YET?" Gurnsey Bank, Worthington, July, 2008, sponsored by WAAL.
SOLO EXHIBITS 2009:
1. "ALL TOGETHER NOW," May 19-June 29, 2009," Worthington Municipal Center, sponsored by The Worthington Arts Council's Visual Arts Committee.
2. GALLERY SHOW: "CONVERGENCE," June-September, 2009, EUROPEAN PAPERS, Columbus, Ohio.
3. "NO COMFORT ZONE," Market Mortgage of Worthington, 330 E. Wilson Bridge Rd., Worthington, Ohio--Nov. 2009-April 2010
"Moon Rock" and "Out and
About" provide the cover art for the books DEATH OF A FRIEND (2007) and ACCIDENTAL ETHNOGRAPHY (2008), published by LEFT
COAST PRESS (LCoastpress.com).
 CLICK HERE: ABRIDGED VERSION, "AN OPTICAL ILLUSION CALLED THE GREAT GATSBY" FIRST PLACE, "Double Take" Exhibit at The High Road Gallery, Worthington,
Ohio--July 4, 2010. "Real, actual, contrasting the ideal aspirations of advertising with the truth of the street.
Honest photo." Judge: Emeritus Professor Tom Hubbard, The Ohio State University School of Journalism and Communications.
THE BIG WHEEL ROLLS TO THE FINAL STOP, END OF THE LINE, THE DREAM'S DRY BOSOM, THE SAFETY NET, THE LAST CALL: "IT'S FOR YOU." E.L.
FIRST PLACE, Fall Exhibit, High Road Gallery, 12 E. Stafford, Worthington, Ohio, through Nov.
21, 2009. "A tribute to painting. The bold and deliberate use of texture and shape forms an unusual 'scape.'
This painting, deriving its title from a James Baldwin book, is textural--with a large T, and becomes a tribute to brush work,
to painting. As a judge I look to find technical prowess combined with uniqueness. This painting presents originality
and daring yet it is grounded in painterly skill."
"And God gave Moses the rainbow sign: No
more water, the fire next time." (Old Spiritual)
"A gorgeous canvas . . . painted in Georgia O Keefe country in New Mexico, and in it masterful gradations of reds, oranges, browns, form a blizzard of tree foliage that nearly covers the side of a non descript ranch house. The colors . . . are on fire, smouldering." Liz James ArtScene
These
magnificent Icelandic ponies were jammed together in a tiny corral at the edge of Gullfoss (Golden Falls) in Iceland.
"The strangely elided and juxtaposed shapes of two big horses stand flank by flank, nearly fill the canvas, and create
a study in design and color that is baffling.--As I recall, a splat of midnight sun, or perhaps a day time moon--is visible
here. And iconic white aurioles, sun-like splats, glimmer in other of Lockridge's paintings.--But you have to look.
The aesthetics of design and abstraction are present in LOST IN ICELAND. Yet, the large truncated shapes of the two
horses suggest something primitive and one cannot help but think of pre Norse myths and legends." Liz James ArtScene
CLICK HERE: MONARCHY: PORTRAITS OF NATURE'S ROYALTY by ERNEST LOCKRIDGE
CLICK HERE: "WILD WOMEN"--NUDES BY ERNEST LOCKRIDGE
"Lockridge's chosen modus, wisely, tends toward
the maxim that 'less is more' . . . [This] foray into grids and pure abstraction is striking yet understated."
ArtScene
"PARK OF ROSES" (below) received the PEOPLE'S CHOICE AWARD, 2008 SPRING ANTHEM EXHIBIT, sponsored by the Worthington Area Art League:
POWER TO THE PEOPLE!
Please click on link to Simon&Schuster
CLICK HERE: "A Tragedy of Revenge Called THE SUN ALSO RISES"
CLICK HERE: THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH, March 19, 2009
This painting arose from an overwhelming desire for a world
of pink, violet, amethyst and gold.
"The hues of SEDONA DUSK emit lavender-sagebrush-deep
purple-fragrances--if you can see fragrances!" Artscene "SEDONA DUSK
enhances the mystical, magnetic effects of this spiritual location through complex monochromatic pigmentation. The viewer
receives information, sensation and light through the artist's energetic brush work." Elizabeth Chrisman, Judge, "Arts
Alive in Technicolor,"Worthington Area Art League Spring Show, March 2010, High Road Gallery, Worthington, Ohio
Note also: My father Ross Lockridge Jr.s great American novel RAINTREE COUNTY--the cry of a mortally wounded spirit--has just been reissued by the Chicago Review Press. RAINTREE COUNTY was the favorite novel of Jim Morrison of THE DOORS
CLICK HERE: "GRANDSON OF PALEFACE, SEDONA," from TRAVELS WITH ERNEST Why did my father Ross Lockridge Jr. commit suicide March 6, 1948, while RAINTREE COUNTY was America's Number One Bestseller? The two biographies of Dad--an envy-driven hatchet-job with kid gloves, and a tedious shaggy-dog story--proffer solutions worthy of Doctor Watson or Colonel Hastings; the Freudian quackery of both biographies is quintessential Sid Caesar. But in TRAVELS WITH ERNEST I unlock the riddle of Raintree County. I could dwell upon the mystery at length, but my act of witness "Grandson of Paleface" will do for now. "Your ms.
lays out the central pattern of the relationship between RFL Jr. and Sr., but without sufficient weight or emphasis. Its figure-in-the-carpet
lies in the struggle that persisted throughout Dad's life to create an identity separate from the man whose name he bore and
who tried from childhood on to obliterate him--making Dad his amanuesis, his ghost-writer, all-round employee, Junior,
the One Chosen to take over and thus be ultimately subsumed by Senior's life. RFL Sr. relentlessly dogged Dad to
subordinate himself to those endless "projects." Note well that Dad objected strenuously to the British edition
of Raintree County's appearing without the "Jr." RFL Sr. felt and acted as though he OWNED his namesake, and
Dad had this [indentured servitude] to struggle against. It's in your narrative, but buried--or off to one side,
in the shadows. At times it seems that you exert your greatest ingenuity in trying to dismiss any serious Dark Side
to this father-son dance of wills (to de-Leggett your story? to douse in advance any possible ember of what you know I think?).
However ineffectual and diminished the Father may be as a person, he remains in some living part of the Son's mind a GIANT.
It requires no sexual dimension to understand how, in the end, giving himself over to the "smotherer" might contribute
to the feelings of entrapment, powerlessness, worthlessness, and loss of self that lie at the base of Dad's suicidal depression."
E.L.
CLICK HERE to Download DARTMOUTH PROFESSOR JAMES M. COX regarding TRAVELS WITH ERNEST CLICK HERE: Regarding TRAVELS WITH ERNEST
CLICK HERE: from HARTSPRING BLOWS HIS MIND (1968) My painting, MOON ROCK, provided cover art for the book, LAST WRITES, A DAYBOOK FOR A DYING FRIEND, by Laurel Richardson, published by Left Coast Press, 2007: 
Professor Laurel Richardson: http://sociology.ohio-state.edu/lwr
CLICK HERE: from FLYING ELBOWS  WHITE NIGHTS provides inter-textual design for the book LAST WRITES. In the painting it's 2 a.m.:
We stand on Race St. and look down Jew Lane, in
the tiny village of Greeve, Tasmania. The naming of "Jew Lane" appears to be lost in the mists of time, though
the proprietor of a restaurant offstage right says, "I think maybe a Jew lived there once."
"Lockridge's [painting] is grounded in his technical aplomb and in his familiarity with work of 'greats'--ranging from Sargent to Grandma Moses to Native American pictographs to the cave paintings at Chauvet. On his artist's statement he says that he began to use his first set of Sargents (!) paints when he was eight years old. Now he uses thickly applied paint and obvious brush strokes, like the Impressionists did. He is not afraid of color. His use of it although broad, is harmonious, meticulous. The tall BURNING BUSH, TASMANIA, seems about to explode with raw color and linear shapes." ArtScene
My wife Laurel, whose father was Al Capone's attorney in the
1920's, lived as a child in this Chicago building, whilst in the building across the alley resided an entire tribe of
Gypsies. She and her childhood pet mutt Happy look apprehensively down at Mimi--our pet Abyssian Red--who rules the
alley, and the world.
CLICK HERE: from PRINCE ELMO'S FIRE. Also, MARK SCHORER's letter to me
"Lockridge has mastered the elements of composition
and color. Yet, his canvasses manage to shimmy, to emit an electric charge.--It's brush strokes in motion! This
is true of TIDAL POOL, YUCATAN, in which a very small man in red trunks swims his way thru huge sheafs of white water toward
the opening crevice that might suggest the birth canal. Lockridge's paintings are all somewhat abstract, yet his majority
of them include elements of the representational. The swimmer in red trunks is a swimmer in red trunks!"
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