Rick Berry (artist)
| Rick Berry | |
|---|---|
| Born |
Richard Riley Berry June 2, 1953 San Bernardino, California, USA |
| Website | rickberrystudio |
Rick Berry (born June 2, 1953) is a contemporary American expressionistic figure artist based in the Boston area. Berry creates art for galleries, illustration, and paintings for theatrical performances. Berry's work has appeared in many science fiction, fantasy and comic books, including Neil Gaiman's Sandman, Magic: The Gathering cards, and Stephen King novels. In 1985, Berry created the first digitally painted book cover worldwide for William Gibson's Neuromancer.
Berry was born in San Bernardino, California in 1953. His father, an air force fighter pilot, was frequently stationed in China. Berry's childhood home was populated with Asian art which fascinated Berry and later found its way into his works.
Frequently moving in his youth, he left behind friends, homes and communities, but he never let go of art. Self-taught, drawing was the constant in his life. He learned from comics, book covers,and anything available from the streets. At 17 while living in Colorado, Berry left school and home, hitchhiking across the country. His art career started around that time in underground comics, as a founding member of Everyman Studios in Colorado.[1]. His first commissioned painting for the book industry was a cover for Jules Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea, published by Simon and Schuster, 1978.
An innovator in new media during the early 1980s, Berry is credited with the first digitally painted book cover, in his cover for the cyberpunk novel Neuromancer, by William Gibson. Published in 1985, this cover was commissioned when it became clear that Neuromancer would sweep the awards after its initial publication in 1984 and remained the novel's cover for almost two decades. Berry created the painting with assistance from hackers at MIT's Machine Architectural Group.
Like William Gibson, Berry purchased his first computer from the proceeds of Neuromancer. He immediately began experimenting with it as a groundbreaking new creative tool, not to mimic techniques of traditional media.
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Wikipedia