Cindy Ritzman’s electrifying wildlife portraits invite viewers into a surreal desert dreamscape, where animals glow with psychedelic energy and personality.
Cindy Ritzman creates vivid, surreal wildlife portraits infused with humor, color, and Southwestern magic. Her work celebrates spirit animals and cosmic curiosity.
Each painting combines expressive realism with a neon palette, drawing from Southwestern ecology, humor, and imagination. In her world, desert creatures are not only subjects of admiration, they're surreal storytellers, agents of color, movement, and cosmic wonder.
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Stay Off The Grass, Cindy Ritzman, 2023, acrylic, 20 x 16 in. / 50.8 x 40.64 cm.
Stay Off The Grass (2023) presents a wide-eyed hare caught mid-chew with a sprig of marijuana dangling from its mouth. Against a pop-art inspired background of twisting neon tendrils, the hare’s fur is rendered with detailed brushwork while the expression captures humorous alarm. Ritzman juxtaposes realism with whimsical design, creating a piece that’s both a stoner joke and a portrait of wild innocence in a world it didn’t intend to disrupt.
Leaping Javelina, Cindy Ritzman, 2024, acrylic, 16 x 20 in. / 40.64 x 50.8 cm.
Leaping Javelina (2024) showcases a javelina mid-bound, sailing across an abstracted landscape of radiant stripes and an atmospheric cosmos. The creature’s form is elongated in motion, shimmering with blues, purples, and turquoise. The dreamlike backdrop gives the javelina a mythical quality, suggesting this animal is less of a forager and more of a celestial voyager leaping through space and spirit.
Shimmering Coyote, Cindy Ritzman, 2024, acrylic, 20 x 16 in. / 50.8 x 40.64 cm.
Shimmering Coyote (2024) is a stunning portrait of a desert coyote, standing amidst pink cactus blossoms and glowing cliffs. The intense amber gaze of the coyote locks with the viewer’s, grounded in lifelike precision while the body radiates in blazing hues of orange, magenta, and gold. Ritzman captures the coyote as a totemic figure, watchful, sacred, and utterly woven into the mythic light of the Sonoran desert.
Together, Ritzman’s works form a kaleidoscopic tribute to desert wildlife, blending humor, reverence, and psychedelia. Each piece transforms ordinary creatures into symbols of transcendence, curiosity, and the boundless wildness just beyond the edges of the rational world.
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