Richard Fett is a Brooklyn-based painter whose work explores the emotional, psychological, and social complexities of contemporary life through the human figure. For more than three decades, he has remained committed to figurative painting, using carefully observed moments drawn from everyday experience to investigate themes of identity, intimacy, desire, and vulnerability.

Whether working in watercolor or oil, Fett approaches painting as a form of visual storytelling. His compositions often suggest narratives without resolving them, inviting viewers to project their own experiences onto scenes that are at once familiar and quietly unsettling. Influenced by theater, cinema, fashion, popular culture, and the history of painting, his work occupies a space between realism and psychological fiction, where subtle gestures and fleeting expressions carry emotional weight.

Fett received his Master of Fine Arts in Painting from Florida State University and his Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Corcoran School of Art. His work has been exhibited throughout the United States, including at Denise Bibro Fine Art, Brooklyn Fireproof, Salon Ciel, Allen Sheppard Gallery, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Monique Goldstrom Gallery, Gallery K and the New Jersey Center for Visual Arts. He has also participated in numerous juried exhibitions selected by distinguished curators, including Thelma Golden, Nan Rosenthal, James Demetrion, Gregory Wittkopp, and Donald Keyes.

His recent work, the Narcissus Series, reflects an ongoing interest in how technology has transformed the way we construct and perform identity. Drawing upon the classical myth of Narcissus, the series examines the selfie as a contemporary form of self-portraiture, where mirrors, smartphone screens, and acts of looking become metaphors for desire, self-awareness, and the increasingly blurred boundary between private experience and public image.

Rather than offering moral judgments about technology, Fett’s paintings ask viewers to consider how digital culture has reshaped our understanding of ourselves and our relationships with others. His work continues a long engagement with figurative painting while addressing questions that are unmistakably contemporary.

Richard Fett lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.

ARTIST’S STATEMENT

My paintings explore the social, sexual, and psychological dynamics of human relationships. Rather than presenting fixed narratives, they invite viewers to construct meaning for themselves, moving from introduction to denouement as active participants in the unfolding drama.

Working within a language of figurative naturalism, I deliberately disrupt familiar expectations of perception. Figures may dissolve into soft focus while their surroundings become sharply rendered, reversing conventional hierarchies of attention and encouraging the eye to question where meaning resides.

My imagery draws from theater, cinema, fashion, popular culture, and art history, while increasingly engaging the visual culture of the smartphone. The selfie, the mirror, and the screen have become contemporary stages upon which identity is performed, observed, and continually revised. In recent work, these motifs are considered through the lens of the myth of Narcissus, not as a moral judgment on vanity, but as a meditation on the enduring human desire for self-recognition and connection.

Whether working in oil or watercolor, I employ layered applications that reward sustained looking. Transparency, reflection, and shifting points of focus become both formal devices and conceptual tools, echoing the mediated ways we experience ourselves and others through photography, film, and digital technology.

My paintings are not personal records but carefully constructed spaces where psychological tension and social codes intersect. Their narratives remain intentionally open-ended, allowing each viewer to bring their own experiences to the work and complete the story in ways I could never fully anticipate.