Praeterita Interview, Six of the Best, Part 25: Kevin Swallow
Special thanks to artist, Philip Hartigan, for posting an interview with me on his blog, Praeterita. Check it out here.
March Abstracts
After some earlier struggling, I'm feeling more in-synch creatively at the moment. I've bounced around a little since January 1st by experimenting with new media, subject matter and palate. For about the last week or so I've been creating some abstract paintings to shake things up.
These abstracts all have similar shapes and colors and are meant to be part of a set. The bottom one is finished and I'm still working on the top two pieces. I'm enjoying the freedom of letting the paintings take me where they want to go.
Images delivered - Chicago Art Leasing projects
I just brought over more photographs to Chicago Art Leasing this afternoon. Chicago Skyline will be going into South Loop Acupuncture and Marina Towers was purchased by Magellan, a large real estate company. It will be placed in their new development, Coast at Lakeshore East. Chicago Ave L Stop is going to be headed over to Hitachi Consulting. Chicago Art Leasing has also placed my painting, NoLita Water Tank (NYC), in a luxury condo development in River North as part of a home staging project for a real estate sale.
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Kamera - new painting in progress
I've been working on a new series of paintings where I combine multiple images in a single painting by diving up the canvas or panel. It's given me some creative freedom due to the unlimited combinations of images. The one I worked on today is below. It's oil on panel, 18x24. I started off with a photo:
Then a sketch (adding in some film strips on the sides):
Then transferred that composition to panel using oil paint:
And here's a close-up view:
It's not quite done, so more to come...
Story Panels - works in progress
These two paintings below (oil on canvas) are works in progress. Using oil paint is new for me and the format is also an experiment. For a long time, I've been trying to figure out how to combine my various media and subject matter in one piece. So instead of creating a full composition that combines all of those, I decided to divide up the canvas into multiple "panels/sections" to create a story or theme. By combining cityscapes and water tanks with abstracts, aerial landscapes, or figures, I can connect different series of work more closely. What I also like about this concept is that each painting is really three paintings in one.
I was inspired to create these story panels after seeing the Deborah Kass exhibit at the Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh recently. Artist David Salle also does a great job of creating paintings by breaking up the canvas in different sections to tell a story. My experience creating "exquisite corpse" pieces during a group drawing exercise also helped create some ideas for this series. I'd like to work toward making some pieces that are much larger and on wood panels. With panels, I could add collage and screen print images to develop mixed media pieces that further combines my media and subject matter.
First Painting of 2013: Dusk at Kinzie and Peoria
This is my first completed painting of 2013. It's based on a photograph I took walking around all day last fall. I was the only one on the street - no cars, no people. I tried to convey that sense of solitude in the painting. I used oil paint only for the first time ever (usually I use acrylic). I really liked how it glided across the panel (a discarded wood door). Definitely going to keep working with oils. Mounted with hooks and wire on the back, it's ready for hanging.
The Cornelian + reflections on 2012
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As 2012 came to a close, I decided to create a self portrait - The Cornelian. It's based on a photograph taken in front of the Cornelia Arts Building where my studio is located. I haven't done a self portrait for a while, so I figured it would be a good exercise to go through since I've been a full time artist for one year now. I think the portrait reveals a several things: happiness, uncertainty, confidence and a bit of skepticism.
Reflecting back, I'd have to say that 2012 was a very successful year for me; I'm extremely grateful for all of the support I received. I started it off by taking an online class from Alyson Stanfield to work on my business plan and to help focus my priorities as an artist. I sold art consistently throughout the year and completed two commission paintings: West Loop Cityscape and Chicago Lakefront Skyline. I hooked up with Chicago Art Leasing which is giving me more exposure by renting out some of my art to businesses and homes. My studio was featured in the New York art blog, Hyperallergic - A View from the Easel; and I took an Experimental Drawing Techniques class to shake up my creativity.
During the second half of the year, I worked with two different art consultants on various submissions to license my art for hotel redesign projects. Last week, one of them came through -- four of my cityscape photographs will be printed large-scale for the Mile North Chicago hotel downtown. A second project for another hotel is still in the works. In addition to making connections with art consultants around the country, I explored some new online opportunities to help get my work in front of art collectors; such as ArtSlant, ArtBarcs, Chicago Art Database, ArtWorldChicago, Art Takes Times Square, and got my art represented in Xanadu's Online Gallery. I continue to show at the Writers Workspace and Transistor and will be exploring a lot more show and art licensing opportunities next year.
One last thing I'm proud of is helping my wife start up the Chicago Writers Conference. We ran a successful Kickstarter fundraising campaign where some of my art went to some generous contributors. I volunteered on the Board of Directors, created the marketing and communications plan, developed website content, created a mobile app, and shot photos of the speakers and reading events. It was a challenge to say the least but very rewarding and we learned a lot. We'll continue CWC with a series of workshops throughout the year and the second annual conference in October.
In early 2013, I'll be launching a new website redesign and I look forward to experimenting with oils to begin taking my art in some new directions.
Happy New Year!
-Kevin
The Storyteller
I created "The Storyteller" last month for my wife's birthday. It was a secret project I worked on and surprised her with it when she came home from a business trip.
She's a writer and reads her stories around town at various live literary events. She also a former actress and improv performer. So, I wanted to capture her creative spirit with this painting.
Invasion of the water tanks
In addition to the recent static abstracts, I'm working out some new ideas about rooftop water tanks and cities' relation to water. Below a very rough start to a mixed media painting that I started this afternoon.
Static Abstractions - works in progress
This has been a month of abstract experiments and trying out new ideas for paintings. For the last few weeks I've been working and re-working the below paintings. I've been using different techniques such as masking, screen printing, drawing with paint markers and conte crayons to build up the many layers.
You can see through to previous layers much like what you might see on an old building with peeling paint and old signage or paste-ups. Still more to go on all of these (or maybe they'll morph into something else). There's a lot going on in these (and on my mind lately) so I'm calling them Static Abstractions.
