Exhibiting | newsite

October 1 - 12

Fort Collins Center for Creativity

200 Mathews St.

Fort Collins, CO

two new collections of oil paintings being released in October 2025.

michael j ryan is bringing you 25 brand new paintings including the "vulnus" series and the "morning meditations" subset. A collection of emotional, tonalist renderings from life...a plot of endangered land near the artist's home.

In addition, artist M.S. Ryan will be showing his "Colorado Sketchbook" series, a collection of 10+ new depictions of the artist's beautiful paintings of the Colorado Landscape.

Join us for our three events at the Center for Creativity.

Wednesday October 1 - opening reception 3-5 pm

Friday October 3 - First Friday Art Walk 6-9 pm

Thursday October 9 -

Creative Community event featuring "Good Carver" and more.

A celebration of art and artists in our community. 6-8 pm

On Thursday, October 9, we are hosting an event at the Center for Creativity that celebrates the Fort Collins creative community. We want to use this night as an opportunity to meet other members of our community, show our support and talk about art, and what it means to be a creative person in a profoundly fractured society.

This is a call for all area artists, writers, poets, musicians, thinkers and dreamers to come enjoy a live performance by Good Carver, listen to some of the "vulnus" playlist, and get to know each other in person.

Bring your weird self in all your glory...and headphones, bring headphones

No charge, just vibes

ARTIST STATEMENTS

M.S. RYAN

COLORADO SKETCHBOOK PROJECT

The Colorado Sketchbook Project is a series
of paintings generated by years of filling
sketchbooks and taking pictures as I traveled
through the western United States.
Of particular interest to me are the nooks
and crannies found in the canyons and valleys
within the Rocky Mountains and the Southwest.
My intent is to present to the viewer
some of those things that interest me in hopes
that the paintings will interest them.

- M.S. RYAN
2025

michael j ryan (nocturnearts)

paintings for the end of everything...

“The works of the roots of the vines, of the trees, must be destroyed to keep up the price, and this is the saddest, bitterest thing of all. Carloads of oranges dumped on the ground. The people came for miles to take the fruit, but this could not be. How would they buy oranges at twenty cents a dozen if they could drive out and pick them up? And men with hoses squirt kerosene on the oranges, and they are angry at the crime, angry at the people who have come to take the fruit. A million people hungry, needing the fruit- and kerosene sprayed over the golden mountains. And the smell of rot fills the country. Burn coffee for fuel in the ships. Burn corn to keep warm, it makes a hot fire. Dump potatoes in the rivers and place guards along the banks to keep the hungry people from fishing them out. Slaughter the pigs and bury them, and let the putrescence drip down into the earth.

There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. There is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolize. There is a failure here that topples all our success. The fertile earth, the straight tree rows, the sturdy trunks, and the ripe fruit. And children dying of pellagra must die because a profit cannot be taken from an orange. And coroners must fill in the certificate- died of malnutrition- because the food must rot, must be forced to rot. The people come with nets to fish for potatoes in the river, and the guards hold them back; they come in rattling cars to get the dumped oranges, but the kerosene is sprayed. And they stand still and watch the potatoes float by, listen to the screaming pigs being killed in a ditch and covered with quick-lime, watch the mountains of oranges slop down to a putrefying ooze; and in the eyes of the people there is the failure; and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.”

- John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath