My name is Rick Hubbard and I live in a beautiful area of California called the Santa Ynez Valley, which is about 40 miles north of Santa Barbara and held between the transversal ranges of the Santa Ynez Mountains that separate it from the coast and the San Rafael mountains.

The San Rafael Mountains are part of the Los Padres National Forest and form the southern boundary of the San Rafael Wilderness Area, the first Wilderness Area set aside by the United States Congress in 1964. This is a gorgeous area that I’ve been backpacking into for the past 20 years.

My love of nature, wild places and solitude developed after my parents divorced and my mom moved my sister and me to the suburb of Cherry Creek outside of Denver, Colorado. It was there in the Rocky Mountains that I began hiking and backpacking. While attending Fountain Valley School I began to express my relationship to nature through photography. These talents were fine-tuned at Franconia College, a small, private, experimental college in the White Mountains of New Hampshire that is now defunct. During this period I began to experiment with non-traditional photographic print processes (Eileen Cowin) and painting (Donald Suggs).

I apprenticed for a while at the Light Gallery in New York City and briefly taught at the Creative Arts Workshop in New Haven, Connecticut. In 1977 I moved to Florida to pursue M.F.A. degrees at Florida State University working with Robert Fichter and Virgil Mirano. A graduate assistantship at the FSU Art Museum afforded me the opportunity to learn exhibition design and art conservation practices, which were later expanded upon when I created Art Handlers, Ltd., a business that transported artwork throughout Florida and the south, as well as provided public art installation services.

After five-years in Florida, the high mountains of the West drew me first to Montana where my family had a ranch bordering Yellowstone National Park, and a year later to Santa Barbara as the exhibition designer for the Santa Barbara Museum of Art. Since 1987 I have worked full-time as an artist, and for the past 20 years I have maintained my art studio in a converted horse facility on our property.

Additionally, I serve as the family representative on The Cinnabar Foundation, a private non-profit foundation that was created by my parents to preserve and protect the Montana and Greater Yellowstone ecosystem.