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Artist Ron Tucker believes his paintings express more about who he is now than any past convention possibly gained from a formal education in art.

“My love for art began in kindergarten when my classroom teacher, a woman with an eclectic sense of creativity, stuck a paint brush in my hand. She ushered me over to an easel and placed a loaded brush in my hand. She encouraged me to paint to the rhythm of a song playing on a small record player. It was a lot of fun. I would listen to the music and paint abstract images that looked like corkscrews or donuts. When a different song cued on the player I would challenge a classmate and say: ‘Paint like me!’ I didn’t realize I was teaching myself to paint loose abstract images.

“I inherited my artistic talent from my father. He was a remarkable problem solver and almost every artistic endeavor involves problem solving. I began creating art at a very tender age by copying cartoon characters from Walt Disney books. There I discovered the power of line, composition, proportion, and color.”

Tucker’s adult life carried him away from his artistic dreams. He served in the U.S. Navy before going off to college to pursue a career in Environmental Health Science. Later he put is education to work in corporate America as a quality assurance manager.

In 1984 Tucker visited an exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago entitled "A Day in the Country, Impressionism and the French Landscape." Tucker was awestruck by the power of the genre. He decided it was time to recall his dreams of becoming an artist.

“Since that day I’ve been dedicating myself to discovering who I am as an artist,” he says. He decided to revisit his artistic dreams and purchased his first set of oil paints, but Tucker immediately became stymied with the medium. Oils were costly and it took months to complete a painting while waiting for the layers to dry. Tucker soon discovered acrylics and the medium matched his temperament perfectly.

Tucker uses multiple techniques and tools to create his images, including extensive use of rubber cement as a masking medium. He feels masking between different layers of color creates surprising nuances in different light environments.

“It’s a given that colors look different in diverse lighting situations, so I wanted to use that fact to my advantage,” he explains. “When people look at my work in the light of a different hour or day they sense a fresh experience.”

Tucker’s work continues to be influenced by the French Impressionists even though his images bear little resemblance. “The Impressionists broke the code for color and I use their methods at every turn,” he says. “The dried colors on the canvas mix in the light instead of a wet palette. That makes for a more interesting and varied work.”

He is absorbed especially with the application of juicy mixtures and accidental combinations to create elements of surprise, and admires Helen Frankenthaler, best known for her work "Mountains and Sea" (1952) on unprimed canvas where wet colors were allowed colors to bleed on the canvas. Tucker uses Frankenthaler’s technique as the center for creating many of his works. To capture a “good bleed,” Tucker paints flat using copious amount of water and paint between dried layers of rubber cement. The work comes to life when the rubber cement is lifted from the canvas.

“I begin with the light colors first; then apply the rubber cement spontaneously between the layers,” he says. “As I add darker colors I try to keep it simple with a balanced composition. The key is deciding what the point of interest should be and when to stop.”

While Tucker is somewhat untried as a skilled artist, he doesn’t feel the need to label his artistry: “I’m not going to try to define my style; I don’t think my viewers can either, so I will leave it up to the art critics to get it wrong.”

I like most people and want people to like me.

I dislike people who think they are the smartest person in the room, people who are self important and poor listners.

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