I met up with Kevin on a rainy night at the Civic Square Building. Seeing as we're both painters, we decided to set up our interview on the fourth floor in the studios: the usual place painters feel at home.
This piece shows some alteration with paint to the found state of the materials, an idea he would like to pursue in future works.
L: First off looking at your work, I have to ask: painting versus drawing versus sculpture?
K: Painting is about the object... or really the combination of the image and the object, and the space in that image. And really drawing seems to be more about working out the idea, but painting can be like that also, but when I think of drawing, I really think more of lines and more of a process.
L: How do you distinguish between them all?
K: Well I don’t know if I want to necessarily distinguish between painting and sculpture, but the difference between painting and drawing for me is, drawing is more about the mark-making.
L: After having you define those, my next question would be: if you had to categorize your work, where would you put your work? Do you want people to see it as sculpture, or are they strictly painting?
K: It’s really grounded in painting, that’s the foundation of it, but it kind of blurs with these other ideas. I’m all about blurring the lines, I like the idea of that.
He privately admitted the table concept may not have been entirely his idea, but that some credit was due to a professor he had over the summer.
L: All right, that makes sense... If they’re paintings then I assume walls have some importance still to you. Wanna talk about that?
K: Right now the wall is necessary for me because I’m so interested in the idea of painting, and traditionally painting is dependent on the wall.
L: So is breaking away a next step for you?
K: I would really like to move away completely from using the wall, or at least directly, just because it’d be a lot harder to convince someone that something freestanding is a painting and not a sculpture, and that really intrigues me. If I can convince people that something that is totally off the wall is a painting, then that would be a really cool thing for me. But even sculpture, well, it depends on where it is shown, but in reality sculpture doesn’t escape the wall either if you consider gallery space around it.
L: Okay so I’m curious, this is a little far stretched, but say someone takes a canvas off the wall and puts it on the floor. Is it still a painting (since it’s such traditional material) just without the wall behind it, or is it now sculpture because it doesn’t have the wall to define it?
K: Well is there paint on the canvas?
L: There could be. Since they’re such conventional materials we’ll say there is.
K: That’s really where the line is blurred. We can blow it up and consider the situation as a whole, you know not just that one canvas on the floor of a room, but really take in the walls and the floor and how they interact with that canvas. To me, I think that painting is building this space, where as sculpture... sculpture is something that just really sits in a space, a painting makes more sense to me, incorporating the space as a whole.
L: Interesting. Since you’re a painter, are you thinking about bringing paint as a material back into your works? I understand that there is some paint on the materials you’ve found, but do you want to alter them at all and add your own to them?
K: Yeah, actually just today I was thinking about that. I mean, I don’t know if I love painting, as much as my work is grounded in painting, but I would just like to work paint into something.
L: So, paint is making a comeback?
K: I’m open to so many options now, I could really go to anywhere from here, where I’m at in my work right now. I want to say that paint never totally left, there are a few pieces where I would work at the same time as paint, but I never necessarily put paint on the object... I didn’t paint it myself, but I would have already found it with paint on it.
From the front the work appears solely as an image on a canvas, but once the viewer moves closer, the dimensionality of the art becomes apparent.
L: I’m curious, how did you get away from traditional painting?
K: I don’t know to be honest. I’m not even sure how I got into regular painting to begin with. It was always really tough for me to do a painting on canvas or even on panel or anything you would normally think of as a painting material.
L: Is that what made you break away then?
K: There were a few moments where I would get interested in it as something to do, but for the most part everything for the last year or so- up until the spring semester, was just flat and way too polished and just didn’t feel genuine. I was just putting out these ideas and that was it, I was done with them.
In his studio: a pile of found materials that he works from.
L: What kind of materials do you use now? Can you talk about how you came across them and why you use them?
K: Really it comes back to the whole idea of process, and how I can use them in this non-conventional format that allows me to experiment and figure out what I want to say without feeling trapped in the materials. It’s all found for the most part, I enjoy the idea of recycling and reusing these things. Painting is about history and in a way they bring their own history to the work.
L: Your materials now, how are they different for you from the usual painting supplies?
K: I really enjoy the way they look. They really give me a way to bring other ideas into my work.
L: Does the location where you find your materials affect your work at all?
K: Yes, because all the pieces are unique to where they come from. And really, they change every time I move somewhere new, because I can't really just pack up all that 'junk' and move it. I only take the things I bought, and then I go out looking for new materials where ever I am.
L: Where do you see yourself going with this in the future?
K: I would like to just experiment more with the materials. A lot of my focus is going to be on the space, and all the factors that brings into the art. How to get away from the walls without losing the idea of painting is huge. I bought some wood paneling and some bamboo flooring I'd like to try and see how that changes things.
L: What about lighting and shadows? Are they just part of the environment for now or is that something you'd like to incorporate into the pieces in the long run?
K: Yeah, definitely. It's been suggested to me that the shadows might be a part of the work, but that really brings me back to the wall and how to break away from that. Mainly my concern is that wall for now, and how to still be called a painter and not so much a sculptor at the end of the day.
L: Good luck with that, I'll be sure to drop by your studio and see what you're up to.
