Ric Garcia

Ric Garcia (born 1968 Miami, Florida) is an American fine arts painter and digital printmaker of Cuban ancestry currently working and residing in the Greater Washington, DC area.

Garcia studied and received a BFA in Graphic Design and Illustration from the University of Miami in Florida.

Garcia's parents were Cuban political refugees who immigrated to the United States in 1966. He was born in Miami "surrounded by a close-knit Cuban American community who shared old-world values and traditions." In 2018, The Voice of America quoted him (in a review of an art show demonstrating "the richness and complexity of U.S. culture" as explaining that his parents "chose to come to this country that was offering asylum."

Garcia's artwork has been described as being "on the traditions of pop art …eliciting emotional reactions, introspective questions and celebrating Latino culture”, and even "Warhol-esque."

Picking up on that description, The Washington Post art critic Mark Jenkins, in a review of an immigration-themed show at the American University Museum, wrote "Ric Garcia updates Warhol by crisply and colorfully portraying edible products for the Latin market, with labels far funkier than any designed for Brillo or Campbell’s."

Garcia often incorporates superheroes, Latino food imagery , and even gods into his work, and in a review of his two-person show at Washington, DC's Foundry Gallery, The Washington Post art critic wrote that "Mid-20th-century superheroes and movie stars socialize with figures from Renaissance paintings in Foundry Gallery’s 'Dynamic Duos: Power and Form.' Ric Garcia’s oils and prints feature DC and Marvel Comics characters..."

His work has been acquired by the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities for the Art Bank collection of the city of Washington, DC. It is also in the collection of the Arts and Cultural Heritage Division of The Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission, and in the permanent collection of Prince George's County, Maryland.

Garcia is a winner of the Maryland State Arts Council 2019 Individual Artists' Awards.