When he was 19, Paul Rickert was drafted and sent to Vietnam as a combat artist. Told to “experience the war and paint whatever reaction he had to it,” Rickert now focuses on “beauty, the quietness…a kind of romantic transcendence” that can be found in nature.
     Following his return from Vietnam, Rickert attended the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena and studied privately with artist Nelson Shanks. He began winning top awards in national juried exhibitions before he graduated which included the Gold Medal of Honor from the Allied Artists of America and the Edgar Whitney Award from the American Watercolor Society.
     Rickert’s paintings are an integral part of numerous private and corporate collections. Among those are the Mellong Bank, New England Mutual Life, Manufacturers Hanover, Bell Atlantic, J.B. Speed Art Museum in Louisville, Kentucky, and the Portland Museum of Art in Maine.