Satchel Projects is pleased to present I Love Painting + Painting Loves Me, a solo exhibition of works by Rick Briggs, on view from April 10 through May 10, 2025.

A novel, a poem, a painting, and a piece of music are individual, that is, beings in which expression cannot be distinguished from the expressed, whose sense is only accessible through direct contact.
- Maurice Merleau-Ponty, “The Phenomenology of Perception”

Known for his direct, loose-limbed yet rigorous works on canvas, Rick Briggs takes painting down to the studs, improvising and inventing each new piece from the ground up. An artist who engages with both the tools and history of painting, Briggs summons a poetic eloquence from the circle of skin that forms within a paint can, the trail of a paint roller, or the raw trace of an oil stick.

Drawn from 3 distinct bodies of work, the works in this exhibition continue this exploration, while taking a step into new territory – quite literally – via a freestanding, three-dimensional painting-wrapped structure.

Working in an open-ended process, Briggs rolls, pours, sprays, and drags paint around, all to conjure the content.  In the show’s eponymous painting, I Love Painting + Painting Loves Me, the vernacular tools and materials of house painting participate alongside acrylic and oil stick. Beyond merely mining these materials for content, Briggs literally builds them into the very structure of his work. Readymade paint rollers physically impale the canvas, creating both an orifice and protrusion, a cheeky allusion to the painting’s potential for loving us back.  A page of spray paint dots, found on the studio floor and adhered to the canvas, is another example of his penchant for spontaneous additions that enhance the painting’s overall visual and conceptual sense.

The scale and proportion of Let’s Dance, a freestanding painting-in-the-round, resonates with that of the body, inviting active participation by the viewer. The title is both a pop reference (David Bowie’s well-known song) and allusion to the rhythmic motion of the action painter (the painted surface is made by chance operation, recalling Pollock’s rhythmic movements). The painting, via its title, is inviting us to dance, suggesting the work’s subjectivity, referring back to the way that the show’s titular painting “loves me.” Briggs elaborates:

As a child, I was fascinated with the slogan printed on the 7-UP bottle: “You like it, it likes you.”  It was funny because it posited a subjectivity to an inanimate object and proclaimed a rapport, a relationship of sorts, with me, as child consumer.  The pleasing symmetry of that sentiment seemed to ensconce us in a sweet (pun intended), endless loop. 

In an ongoing series of large, luminous stripe paintings, Briggs starts with a paint roller and applies long vertical swaths of translucent color, as if painting a wall. The painting turns the notion of work on its head and instead becomes a celebration of light. One such canvas in the exhibition, titled Life Saver, takes its name as much from the brightly colored, jewel-like candy as an appreciation for a life in painting. In Briggs’s words, “painting is a life saver.”

Rick Briggs is an artist living and working in Brooklyn and upstate New York.  His abstract paintings draw upon his lived experience and personal painting history.  His work has been featured in solo shows at Ortega y Gasset Projects (Brooklyn, NY), Sarah Bowen Gallery (Brooklyn, NY), and Flecker Gallery (Seiden, NY).  Group shows include The American Academy of Arts and Letters (NY, NY), Brooklyn Museum (Brooklyn, NY), Yale University (New Haven, CT), Anton Kern Gallery (NY, NY), Timothy Taylor (NY, NY), Paula Cooper Gallery (NY, NY), and Dorsky Gallery (NY, NY), among many others.  Briggs has been a recipient of the Purchase Prize from The American Academy of Arts and Letters, a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation fellowship, and a Pollock-Krasner Foundation fellowship.  His work has been featured in The New York Times, Hyperallergic, the Brooklyn Rail, Art News, and the Village Voice.  Additionally, Briggs has contributed art reviews for Hyperallergic, Two Coats of Paint, and Culture Catch.

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