Earlier Work (pre 1997)

Ricky Roman’s route to creativity was a path cut through the forest of his own life rather than the more conventional road of formal education. The thicket of his experience is full of contradictions. He found little to relate to at his London school, but at weekends he visited the British Museum and lost himself in the compelling world of the Ancient Egyptians, allowing his imagination to take flight with the winged mythological beings that inhabited the richly decorated artifacts there. And later when he found himself in the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in New York, with no particular predisposition towards painting, it was the artist of the Twentieth Century, and the Impressionist and the Post – Impressionist who spoke directly to him. The courage of their convictions, the sensuous joy of marks made for their own sake and the exciting possibilities of abstraction put his own life into context and made sense of the spaces within it. It was in this city at what seemed to be the furthest point from the natural world and from the Dorset and Devon countryside growing to love, where he came to the realization that it was through paint and paint alone that he could access the latent feelings that had previously had no form of expression outside his own world of dreams and imagination. A seed of possibility was sown here, prompting the realization that he might be able to give colour and shape to the experience of playing Indian Classical music which he had been disciplining himself to learn. Returning to England, he knew with absolute clarity that he was to become a painter. He forged a route for himself through the imagery of the countryside, through his Jewish identity, all the time accompanied by the Indian music and his sitar which gave melody to his thoughts. His journey continues into the unknown with all its frustrations and disappointments but with its promise of fulfillment also.

Heather Fallows (2000)