Ryden studied Illustration and graduated from the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, in 1987. His solo debut show entitled “The Meat Show” was in Pasadena, California in 1998.

Ryden’s work combines a saccharine cartoon-like sensibility – much like the doe-eyed Margaret Keane creatures of the 1960s – with a detailed fullness and a creepy combination of numerology, little girls, meat, Catholic and Buddhist symbolism, and carnivalesque Americana. His work ranges from large highly-polished oil paintings to small black-and-white works on paper. Like modern illustrators Sir John Tenniel and Edward Gorey and game designer American McGee, Ryden is influenced by the fantastic art of Alice in Wonderland and early Renaissance landscapes.

His work has gained greater prominence within the public domain thanks to so-called lowbrow art publications such as Juxtapoz in which his work features regularly. In fact Ryden has collaborated with other lowbrow artists such as Gary Baseman and Tim Biskup, in addition to composers Stan Ridgway (Wall of Voodoo) and Pietra Wexstun, ( the CD soundtrack to “Blood – Miniature Paintings of Sorrow and Fear”).

Over the past decade, the marriage of accessibility, craftsmanship and technique with social relevance, emotional resonance and cultural reference has catapulted Ryden beyond his roots and to the attention of museums, critics and serious collectors. Ryden’s work has been exhibited in museums and galleries worldwide, including a recent museum retrospective “Wondertoonel” at the Frye Museum of Art in Seattle and Pasadena Museum of California Art.
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