About Ricky Schaede

Ricky is a Canadian artist born in Brampton, Ontario in 1993.  His love of animals, nature, and fantasy is rooted in his early childhood, and serves as the foundation of his paintings and drawings.  He works as an artist, art instructor, and community arts advocate in the small town of Orangeville, Ontario, Canada.  Ricky is self-taught but is always seeking new artistic knowledge and exploring new mediums, to expand his understanding and hone his craft.  Current projects include writing and illustrating a children's picture book, and creating a new body of artwork including several large scale oil and acrylic paintings. 

Artist Statement

My artwork is rooted in a love for nature, fantasy, and the human experience, a love that has its roots way back in my early childhood.  When I paint, I connect to my inner worlds and allow myself to explore, play, think, and feel, and create whatever comes through.  Some images are completely spontaneous, while others are created with varying degrees of pre-planning and conceptualization.  It is a dance with the essence of my spirit, an interplay between my subonscious mind, my emotions, and my thinking brain.  I paint my fantasies, and often images that have come to me in dreams, or in flashes of inspiration and insight.  I believe each person has their own unique imagination, an entire world inside filled with characters, feelings, colours, and experiences.  As an artist, I have the privilege of exploring and sharing my world with others.  I feel so lucky to be living this life of imagination and creativity through my art. 

I work primarily with oils and acrylics, but I also love graphite and charcoal drawing, and sculpture.  Paintings usually focus around a central character, and often include cosmic elements, landscapes, and a cast of supporting characters to create a storybook feeling, as if we are witnessing a snapshot of a moment in a fairytale.  I love creative writing and often including a short story or description with my work, to connect viewers with the sense of narrative that I feel is integral to the work.

Extended Bio

Ricky Schaede was born in 1993 in Brampton, Ontario.  His father introduced him to painting and drawing at a young age, and Ricky grew up with a love for art and the imagination.  Ricky found his voice as a visual artist upon returning home from a series of sacred fire ceremonies in Guatemala at the age of 19.

Since discovering his passion for painting, Ricky has exhibited his work internationally, been featured in publications, won multiple awards, and sold pieces to collectors in Ontario and Quebec.  In 2015 and 2016, Ricky traveled to Austria to study the Mische Technique with Philip Rubinov Jacobson and Mantra Cora, an early renaissance technique considered to be a sacred treasure, infusing paintings with ‘an inner light’.  In 2015, Ricky joined the Canadian Society for Art of the Imagination, participating in their exhibit in Montreal in October 2015, and in Manhattan at ONE Art Space, in April 2017.  Ricky's most recent solo show 'The Triumph of Life' took place at Maggiolly Art during the Orangeville Blues and Jazz Festival in June 2017.  Ricky's work also includes his role as an art instructor at Maggiolly Art in Orangeville, where he was worked since 2014.  Teaching a variety of classes for kids and adults, both to groups and privately, he loves to share the joy of art with others. In 2019, Ricky was awarded the 'Painting with Water Media Award' at the Insights 40th Annual Juried Exhibition of Fine Art for his piece 'Cassiel'.  Ricky is also a 2019 recipient of the Dufferin Art's Council's Reed T Cooper Bursary in Visual Arts to produce and self publish his first kid's book.  

As he forges forward, his work continues to evolve and expand as he gains technical knowledge and skill, as well as life experience and wisdom.  The fantastical world he explores in his paintings has only just begun to reveal itself to him, and he is always excited and surprised by what ends up on his canvas.  Ricky's plans for the future are to continue creating and refining his body of work with the goal of seeking gallery representation and exhibiting his work more extensively internationally.