American, b. 1977 Richard Blake received his BFA from The Rhode Island School of Design, including one year of studio practice in Rome, Italy, and his MFA from Cornell University. After several group exhibitions, and a solo show in 2005, he moved to New York City and began working as a storyboard artist for various film and commercial companies. In 2019 he began writing and drawing the graphic novel Hexagon Bridge (Image, 2023). The book explores many of the themes central to Blake’s work: parallel dimensions, cartography, sentient A.I., shifting architecture, and travelers moving through strange, elusive landscapes. Displaying a slightly melancholic, strange and contemplative atmosphere, the artist readily admits the influence of European comics in his drawings. The work of Moebius, Bilal and Schuiten, reprinted in the pages of 1980s issues of Heavy Metal, was the first time he encountered this kind of tone in comics specifically based on science fiction. As Richard Blake says: "Even though the stories were incoherent, whether due to translation or the complexity of the ideas, the illustrations were so deliberate and the worlds so unique that I kept coming back to them. They gave off an atmosphere that really resonated with me". Inspired by writers such as Jorge Luis Borges and Italo Calvino, Blake uses a variety of mediums to expand his narrative ideas, including watercolor, acrylic, graphite and digital drawing. He currently lives and works in New York.