Dust and Shade: Drawings by Charles Ritchie reviewed in the Philadelphia Inquirer
posted: 10/2/11
Charles Ritchie has lightened up since his last show with Gallery Joe. Rather than concentrating solely on nocturnal scenes of his domestic interior and immediate neighborhood on a cul-de-sac in Silver Springs, Md., as he has for much of his career, he occasionally turns his eye to sunlit subjects, and the results are dazzling. Never mind that May, a graphite and charcoal drawing Ritchie began in 1996 and finished this year (he has been known to work on a drawing off and on for years) is composed largely of shades of gray. It captures the essence of a warm spring day when every plant and tree has burst to life in the kind of celebratory harmony that Charles Burchfield captured so memorably in color.