Dan Rizzie: A World of Memory and Symbols

Dan Rizzie is an artist of the heart, whose work is playful yet sophisticated and combines a rich variety of medium and textures. His images and subject matter conjure a world of memory and symbols. 

 Born in Poughkeepsie, NY  in 1951,  he grew up in India, Egypt, Jordan and Jamaica. Rizzie lives in Sag Harbor, New York.[1]

Dan  is a painter, printmaker, and collage artist. He attended Hendrix Collegein Conway, Arkansas under the mentorship of Don Marr and Bill Hawes.[2] At Hendrix he received his BFA in 1973.[2] In 2005, Rizzie was awarded Hendrix College's Distinguished Alumnus Award.Rizzie earned a MFA from Southern Methodist University's Meadow's School of Art in Dallas, Texas in 1975.[1][4]

Dan Rizzie is an artist of paradoxical qualities.  His independence is in contrast to his aesthetic conservatism.  And perhaps because of his unwillingness to be either revolutionary in his artistic approach, or as flamboyant in technique as he is patently capable of, his work hasn’t been as accurately understood as it deserves to be.  Rizzie’s extraordinary knowledge of art history informs his art deeply, but in off-beat, even eccentric ways. One is tempted to suggest that at times absorption in the art of others, subsumes his own passion to express a uniquely individual set of feelings.

Rizzie's art is represented by major galleries across the country and is included in many important collections, including the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art and  the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York,[4] the Dallas Museum of Art, the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, the San Antonio Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and collections at AT&T Corporate Center, Chicago, Illinois, Delta Air Lines, Parrish Art Museum, and the Mayo Clinic.