RESUME (PDF)
ABOUT THE ARTIST (PDF)
ARTIST STATEMENT (PDF)
About Kevan
Botanical artist Kevan F Willington after graduating from the Colorado Institute of Art he began his career as a graphic artist. After years of doing commercial work, he discovered that, rather than merely providing a service for his clients, the only way to produce art depicting his own inner vision was to paint.
Kevan initially painted plein air landscapes then moved to closer more intimate botanical subjects. Although he enjoyed the immediate process of alla prima painting, Kevan craved depth so he moved toward a more indirect painting method. His work alternates between building up surface layers and sanding them down and applying many glazes to create a polished stone like quality. Kevan believes that there is for him just as much usefulness in the process destruction as creation in his work, "It allows me to revitalize and transform my paintings into something I couldn't pre-conceive. They become a balance between the known and the unknown."
Kevan now maintains a studio in Minneapolis, MN and exhibits nationally.
Artist Statement
On the surface, my paintings are intimate botanical dioramas set against vast empty light filled skies. On a deeper level, my work is a manifestation of the Taoist law that extremes turn into their opposites. I use bold saturated luminous color with an old as rock yet modern contemporary feel using traditional and non-traditional painting methods.
Look at my paintings and you will see that what is close is really distant, and what is distant is really close. You will find infinite worlds within the small intimate details of nature and infinite skies as close and tangible as stone.
To create these transformational images I bridge the gap between the physical and the metaphysical. Between the past and the future; where opposites turn into each other; like the edge of a cliff or the eye of a storm or the moment before a first touch that separates isolation from connection.
I walk up to the doorway where problems become solutions and solutions become problems and feel the subtle tug of one world becoming the other. It is the simultaneous death of one world and the birth of another.
Good paintings are a dance between my intentions and what is happening naturally with the paint. If I hold too tightly to my intentions it won't work.This process can be quite tumultuous. Often I must let go of the original intended direction of the painting and let it die. Every painting is a crisis requiring surrender. The process without surrender and trust can be terrifying. Ultimately I don't know where I'm going. It's a bit like running though a forest with my eyes closed. Only blind faith ensures ones success.
