Ryan Mulligan mines the best and worst memories of his life in drawings, paintings, sculpture, and installation that resonate as sketch comedy culled from a personal hell. They are as funny as they are sad. Mulligan’s illustrative drawing style, pastel palette and cartoon-like use of line, reduce the severity of his subjects, casting them in a playful, even apologetic light. It is as if in order to help his life, Mulligan cannot take art too seriously. He draws while absorbing romantic comedies, bouncing his infant son in a floor seat. The studio becomes extension of the home, a playground for a stimulus junkie.
Born and raised in rural Virginia, Ryan Mulligan attended Virginia Commonwealth University for his MFA and is now Assistant Professor of Art for the University of Cincinnati. He currently is the coordinator of the Art Foundations Program, and teaches students to continually explore their own lives as source material, and maintain a ceaselessly productive studio practice.