I paint the quiet relationship between sunlight and the built American landscape.

My work focuses on modest coastal architecture—cafés, storefronts, homes, and leisure spaces—places shaped by routine rather than spectacle. Removed from crowds and activity, these structures become sites of stillness, where light, shadow, and geometry carry the emotional weight of the scene.

Working in oil, I reduce each composition to its essential elements. Color and form are used deliberately, allowing atmosphere and structure to coexist without narrative emphasis. Human presence is implied but never shown, leaving space for pause, memory, and observation.

This ongoing body of work, Sun and Structure, sits between American Realism and Minimalism. It is not concerned with nostalgia, but with attention—an effort to hold ordinary places long enough for their quiet significance to emerge.

Richard Blanco is a painter educated at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, with a professional background spanning more than twenty-five years in illustration and advertising. Born and raised in South Florida, his work is informed by the light, architecture, and quiet rhythms of coastal environments. He currently lives and works in the St. Louis area, where he continues to develop Sun and Structure, an ongoing body of oil paintings exploring stillness, form, and atmosphere in the built American landscape.