Artist RD Riccoboni often gets asked: “What’s this painting about?”
He soon realized that every piece he’s ever painted has a story to tell, fictional or otherwise.
So when he came up with the idea of writing a book, it wasn’t that big of a leap, artistically speaking. He’s already drawn the characters — painted them, actually — so why not go ahead and tell their stories?
Riccoboni, a longtime San Diego artist who has studios in Hillcrest and in Balboa Park, is known locally and beyond for his unique painting style: bold strokes coupled with bold hues. Many of his paintings, with shades plucked from the colors of the rainbow, address themes that help tell the story of the LGBTQ community.
Gina Caruso, who works in marketing and once owned an art licensing business, has admired Riccoboni’s work for a long time and says his “blend of creativity and business acumen is rare in the arts. He follows his intuition and heart when exploring new directions, which has set him apart. His work has contributed to the LGBTQ community by expanding visibility and fostering inclusive storytelling.”
Now, that storytelling shifts from the canvas to page as Riccoboni releases his first limited-edition fairy-tale picture book. It incorporates his brightly colored paintings with his words, representing two chapters from a novel that’s still a work in progress.
The picture book — which will be launched Nov. 8 at a book-signing event at The Studio Door gallery, where he has a studio — is called “Knights of The Vermillion Rose: A Science Fiction Fairytale of the Gay Romantic Comedy Kind.”
“I have always painted portraits,” Riccoboni says, “and people would say, ‘Oh, is that a lover … and I’d say no, it’s just a portrait of a friend, but it could be. Then I thought, ‘I need to make up a story,’ so I started writing fiction stories, and I wasn’t really doing anything with them.”
During the pandemic, he began creating more paintings — of people, places and things. The more he painted, the more he had the urge to write about them.
“I started painting portraits of people and writing stories to go with it, and then that’s where I got the idea for this about a year ago,” he says. “I thought, wouldn’t it be fun to do a sci-fi story based on some of the paintings that I’ve done?”
So he started writing.
“And then one day, I went, ‘Oh my gosh, I have a fairy-tale picture book with all these illustrations. I did it mostly for myself at first, then for the LGBTQ community.”
Riccoboni says he “always loved fairy-tale picture books as a kid. There was something appealing about them.”
But there was also something missing: He never had one for his own community. As a queer artist, Riccoboni always found that disappointing. Many years ago, while strolling through a thrift shop, he did find a queer-centric fairy-tale book titled “Fairy Tales.”
“It was this small book, like the ones we had as kids,” he recalls of the book, which put queer characters in traditional fairy tales. “But someone swiped it at one of my house parties, and that was that. But then I thought, ‘Well, you know what, what if I created one? You know, I’ve got the creativity, I’ve got the artistry, I’ve got some writing skills.”
That’s how “Knights of The Vermillion Rose” came to be.
Riccoboni doesn’t take himself too seriously, admitting that his science-fiction picture book serves up otherworldly tales that some might find only mildly amusing. It has aliens, spaceships and same-sex couples, including countless representations of the bearded men that figure prominently in many of his gay-themed paintings.
But what his picture book does, though, is present an inclusive story.
“For my own community,” the 64-year-old Riccoboni says of his book, “I hope they see themselves and they feel more accepted.”
That ethos — of encouraging inclusivity — drives most of what Riccoboni does as an artist. In his artwork and his books, his goal is to create a sense of community and belonging, a desire born of an upbringing that often made him feel like he didn’t belong.
As a young artist growing up in Connecticut, he often heard friends and relatives discourage him from pursuing art as a career.
“Everybody told me you could never make a living as an artist, but that didn’t make sense because where I lived, there were a lot of very wealthy artists, including Anna Hyatt Huntington,” Riccoboni says.
Huntington was an American sculptor known around the world. One of her most prominent works is “El Cid,” located at the entrance to Plaza de Panama in Balboa Park.
“She did the big statue out in the middle of the park, which is kind of the reason I moved to San Diego,” he says. “I remember walking into the park, and I saw that statue, and I was like, ‘Oh my God, my grandmother knew her.’”
As an out gay man, “you kind of get squashed down. No, you can’t be that. You can’t be an artist. You can’t do this, you can’t do that.”
Artistically, he felt stifled in Connecticut, so he aimed his sights on California.
Once here, “I did banking. I did human resources.”
But he was miserable. Art proved to be his saving grace.
“I never stopped making my art and going into shows,” he says.
Exposure to the work of two artists — namely David Hockney and Keith Haring — was the affirmation he needed that working as an artist, a queer artist even, is not a bad thing.
While on a high school field trip to see the British literature art collection at Yale University, a teacher nudged Riccoboni to skip the literature-centric exhibit and instead pop into a nearby gallery to see Hockney’s work.
There, surrounded by Hockney’s queer art, Riccoboni had an epiphany.
“I grew up in a religion that told me that something was indeed wrong with me. But I was like, ‘Wow, there’s nothing wrong with me.”
That a-ha moment — one that pushed him toward a path of self-discovery and self-acceptance — has been a prominent theme in Riccoboni’s journey as an artist and as a person.
Being his authentic self, Riccoboni says, has brought forth nothing but positive outcomes.
“What’s really interesting as an artist is … once I started accepting myself and not worrying about what other people thought of me, doors started opening for me because I was being authentic about myself and expressing myself through my work.”
That’s exactly what Haring, the 1980s-era American artist known for animated pop style, gave Riccoboni: a life lesson about expressing his true self.
“He was at what appeared to be a pop-up on Christopher Street in Manhattan, donating T-shirts with his artwork on them to raise money” for gay causes,” Riccoboni recalls.
Haring was already well-known by then, and the last thing Riccoboni wanted to do was bother a famous artist who appeared to be in a rush. But he wasn’t about to let this fateful moment pass. He said “hello” and told Haring that years before, a high school teacher introduced him to Haring’s work.
“And now, here I am talking to him on Christopher Street,” Riccoboni recalls.
They talked for a bit, and Riccoboni walked away with a practical suggestion from Haring himself: Find your visual voice, something that people will recognize in your work.
Now decades later, Riccoboni hasn’t only found his voice — visual and otherwise — but he’s using it to bring attention to causes that mean the most to him.
Somewhat soft-spoken, Riccoboni is hardly timid in his art. Much of his work centers around the LGBTQ community, with colorful pieces capturing snapshots of gay life.
His palette is based on the colors of the rainbow flag, a quiet but forceful commitment to telling the LGBTQ story. Over the years, he’s chronicled pivotal moments in the LGBTQ timeline, from the AIDS crisis to the legalization of gay marriage and everything in between. One of his pieces — a portrait of Balboa Park’s California Tower adorned with the Pride flag — hung in the California state capitol during Toni Atkins’ tenure as president pro tempore of the California State Senate. That painting is now hanging at the San Diego History Center and is part of its permanent collection.
San Diegan Nancy Berger has long marveled at the impact of Riccoboni’s work in the community: “RD is a man with a beautiful and ethical moral compass. His art depicts social integrity and passion in supporting the LGBTQ community. He has raised social awareness for many movements expressed in his beautiful art.”
With “Knights of The Vermillion Rose,” Riccoboni is continuing that work, now using his talent to paint more stories, this time with his words.
“Knights of The Vermillion Rose: A Science Fiction Fairytale of the Gay Romantic Comedy Kind” by RD Riccoboni (Beacon Artworks Corporation, 2025; 50 pages)
“Knights of The Vermillion Rose: A Science Fiction Fairytale of the Gay Romantic Comedy Kind” by RD Riccoboni (Beacon Artworks Corporation, 2025; 50 pages)
Book-signing for ‘Knights of The Vermillion Rose’
When: 6 p.m. Nov. 8
Where: The Studio Door, 3867 Fourth Ave., San Diego
Admission: Free. Limited-edition books as well as original artwork from the book will be available for purchase at the event.
Online: rdriccoboni.com