Bio
Born 1959, Weymouth England, moved to Nova Scotia Canada 1960. Active in visual arts and music since childhood, it was during the 1970s Richard was exposed to film cameras and processing during high school in St. Thomas Ontario. He studied fine arts at Sault College of Applied Arts and Technology in Ontario during 1978-79, then travelled from the Yukon as far south as Mexico as a source of inspiration. Through the 1980s he produced multi-projection slide shows with his brother Martin while living in Banff Alberta. These shows included bleached, burnt, boiled and otherwise hand-painted slides, synchronized to music. Many experiments combining abstract photography, kinetic art and music, led to animation studies at the Quickdraw Animation Society (QAS) 1990. From his studio in Canmore Alberta, Richard produced several animation films for art gallery exhibitions, notably “Major ReBeouf's lost (and found) film” (1993) for Exceptional Pass at the Whyte Museum for the Canadian Rockies and “Zoo,” a 1-minute film for the Langham Cultural Centre in Kaslo, BC.
A grant from the Canada Council for the Arts in 1994 allowed him to make “Linear Dreams,” which went on to screen at more than 50 film festivals and receive many international awards. Since 1993 Richard has led cameraless animation workshops and from 1998 has taught Super 8 film techniques at the Gulf Islands Film and Television School. Workshop and festival activities have taken him across Canada and to Norway, Sweden, Finland, Germany, Czech Republic and Brazil. In 1997 he moved with his wife Darlene,to a small island off Canada’s west coast. During 1998 he worked on the cameraless film “Sea Song” with a production grant from the Canada Council for the Arts, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival and screened at many others. Richard produced a trailer for the Canadian Filmmakers Distribution Centre and during 2000 received a British Columbia Arts Award which lead to the production of his animated film “1:1.” Richard also directed an “Optical Orchestra” in the National Arts Centre as a live group performance for the signal film which opened and closed the 2002 Ottawa International Animation Festival.
Since then, Richard has been working as Film Production Coordinator at QAS and has participated in many festival juries and curated programs. His latest film “Element of Light” received a Directors Choice Award at the 2005 Black Maria Film Festival and was screened at the opening Gala for the Images Festival 2005. Richard continues to produce new works, exploring cameraless animation as visual music and promoting animation as a time and space art form.