Kevan F Willington
KEVAN WILLINGTON’S RESUME (PDF)
KEVAN’S ARTIST STATEMENT (PDF)
KEVAN’S ARTIST BIO (PDF)
About the artist …
Botanical artist Kevan F Willington was born in Sioux City, Iowa and was raised in Omaha, Nebraska near a heavily wooded farm. It was there that he first developed an appreciation for the gifts of nature. After graduating from the Colorado Institute of Art in 1980, 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 outdoors, and later finished them in his studio, giving his work a dreamy ethereal quality. Craving simplicity and a more immediate artistic process he began painting botanicals, exploring the infinite landscapes within the small details of nature.
Kevan's experienced hand and intuitive color sense give his work a painterly flow and a striking simple harmony.
When foraging nature for subject matter, he carries no preconceived notions of what to paint. He simply waits for nature to speak up.
Kevan now maintains a studio in St. Paul, MN and exhibits nationally.
Artist Statment
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 there opposites. I use bold saturated luminous color with an old as rock yet modern contemporary feel using traditional and non-traditional painting methods.
Look closely at my paintings and you will see that what is close is really the distant. And what is distant is really close. I find infinite worlds within the small intimate details of nature and infinite skies become 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.