Roni Sherman Ramos

Biography

​Roni Sherman Ramos has sketchbooks in tow whether outdoors in the Northeast, in Europe, or the Caribbean. Yet, her top-floor home studio remains the site of deepest concentration and broadest investigation of light, shadow, and space. Whether the setting is outdoors or an indoor gathering of natural objects, her work has the nature of the landscape. Those who have been witness to the canvasses of several decades are often struck with the visual paradox of vertical flatness and spatial depth that coexist and interplay, especially in paintings, watercolors, and sketches of interiors.​

Roni Sherman Ramos was born in Brooklyn, N.Y. Her education in the visual arts includes training in copperplate and monoprint at the New School under John Ross. At the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens, Plein air and botanical watercolors were studied under the tutelage of Fred Gutzeit. This was later followed by figurative work with live models at Long Island University. Parsons School of Design was the setting in which oil painting became part of her repertoire, and Cooper Union provided for the exploration of pastels, a medium of expression that retains its distinctiveness in her work to this day.

John Ross, a renowned printmaker, and illustrator took Roni beyond technique in etching to an awareness of the necessity and potency of negative space. Early exposure to Fred Gutzeit’s influence brought to life some essential principles: implication and suggestiveness as preferable to replication, an invitation to engage the “edginess” of the unexpected, and playfulness.

However, it was during the years of study with Nick Buhalis that Roni refined and enhanced artistic expression. She describes this time as one filled with the essentials of lights, darks, and shapes, and with advanced notions of visual dance, compositional complexity, linear extension, and the subliminal “conversation” among angular elements that draw the eye before the eye knows that it is drawn. Perhaps unique in Roni’s years with Nick is the use of a moving live model and the practice of utilizing many lines to generate movement through multiple representations.

In 2009, Donald Holden’s watercolors drew Roni’s admiration. She could not have known that an almost chance meeting with him would result in an invitation “to tea” at his studio in Irvington, N.Y. A rapport was established that culminated in an ongoing series of mentoring sessions. The envelope of possibility in watercolor continues to be pushed.​

Most recently, an association with portrait painter Andy Reiss sprung from a desire to go back to basics and study drawing academically. Once a week Roni goes to Andy’s school in Brooklyn to review and learn the principles of drawing and the extent to which they could be applied to her drawings and paintings. Also, Roni’s close association with the painter/educator Judith Kruger has an ongoing importance to her development as an abstract artist.​

Artist statement

My paintings are an exploration of color: how they interact with each other; how they create a visual dance that carries the viewer to each aspect of the work. Although they often appear as abstract landscapes, they are in fact external expressions of internal, unconscious emotional reactions to memories of places and times. My process involves layering paint until the composition becomes apparent. From there, destruction, rebuilding, and refining. The intention is to allow the color to form the shapes and to allow the shapes to define the composition.