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welcome to come to see some of them say nobody gallons
a program that encourages good discussion in our community attorneys
local and global issues
now your host recover since infancy robert college author and professor and
nationally known sports economists doctor kevin kling
welcome the conversations from seeing or college
i'm kevin quinn
our special guest is ours quick bleeds and will discuss his career in the local
art scene
literacy dispatchers degree from the university of denver
he continued his art and design studies at the herrington college of design and
finishes formal studies with four years of economic trading at the school of
representational art
we've studied privately with master draftsman and recognize chicago
figurative artist fred burger among others
he's exited his work in numerous museum exhibitions around the country including
its a norbert college
leads one the directors choice award for speaking past oral dreaming in twenty
ten
greg welcome the program
well anybody that looks at your art realizes that you had very strong
fundamentals which means you studied this for a long time uh... tell us when
you first started studying art
i went to high school that was uh... rich in fundamental you know now in in
our fundamentals now today they're cutting back on programs everywhere i
went to high school where there were three faculty members that were
dedicated to teaching art three studios there were some students was at a
tremendous skill and talent that i was
you know around
um... so i was very fortunate
in that way
um... went with the university of denver when i got there
the arts building was brand new
at wonderful facilities so i took as many classes in there as i could
um...
you know i just got a a bulletin from the university saying they're getting
ready to remodel an add on to the
to to a building that was knew when i got there
and i'm thinking oh my gosh i am really getting it benefits as they happen
if you go out with your buildings
that's a good sign
no
well um... but
with when you're done with college e were done with your formal training at
all take you tended to institutions and chicago-area
actually from what i can tell two very different kinds of institutions with
respect to art
one of them was the uh... school representation are in the oven was to
hear it in column sign plus a little bit about those two places and
most people are kind of done when they uh... when they finish college but
something broke
yeah i think evan for me what had happened is that by starting to realize
with more clarity
what it was i wanted to do it became
uh... more committed to the idea of more comfortable with the idea
and um...
so i knew that there were
there were some uh... holes in my training some things that i needed to
acquire
and uh...
that is what took me to those two institutions to study
um... the school of representational art
was where i got my mechanics skills uh... it's specifically about painting
and drawing
and it's uh... it was defined after designed after the on nineteen th
century french
and german academies
uh... this was a very thorough training and i knew i needed that i knew i wanted
it so that's why i went there
um... the design school
uh... that is such a big part of what we do regardless if it weren't architect or
were uh...
uh... painter or a sculptor graphics person
uh... design is the
context within which we work with the formal elements you know and we win we
paint towards so i knew that that was important as well so
uh...
fortunately all those things kind of a line for me i think having that i would
do it in a different order now than i did it you know he said when i got on
with my
my university uh...
education then i went into these other things
i think if i were to do it again i would do the opposite i would reverse it
and i think that i would
uh... as far as my university schooling i would take i would go to a liberal
liberal arts school
and uh...
focus more on the board liberal arts because i think that those are very
important to an artist i think they're very important to everybody
but you know uh... to me
art uh... of any time he is the is the the leading edge of where the culture is
is going that if you want to do it you know sort of understand the nineteen
sixties
you need to look at the forties fifties uh... ninety four is making fifties art
doesn't understand where
haha that became uh... means mainstream and
to need to understand are do you need to understand in the context and
it literature on all the things that we do in liberal arts bruno nena i study
primarily sports and i would argue that that's
trying to save it
if you look at when sports emerged in culture it's about the same time you
know mark
archaeological eve tidbits about the same time
you know music drama
in indian art
so uh...
i've been except on a sense to me you'd wanna you want to do things that way so
houston chicago area as a practicing artist after you finish up
yesterday a at these places headed and in evanston separate from the status
that was the last place i live that was last place i had a studio prior to
moving too
uh... sister bay
uh...
i saw a touch on something that you said
and if it's went when people ask me about education or were to go to school
or how to do things you know younger people
our history
i think is a critical part
of our training
and uh...
because it's uh... you know it puts into what we're doing now and gives you that
that context
you're able to see where you fit in the theater of things
uh... so i think that that is a very very good point
and uh...
my our histories is is critical
we uh... i know that it it's uh... popular course of that students take
here in you know we have people estate business or they want to be teachers or
whatever and
and uh...
you know that i look at our general education program take this but they
really
like those courses
and they tend to fill up very quickly and take some time seniors will wait and
uh... or people wait till their senior salute became you get into those courses
which
makes us feel good because that's what we're supposed to be were supposed to do
in your socially are so you carry out your young man and you're in the art
scene in chicago
i mean what a cool place to be a minute and a lot of places what what what's
that like
to be inside of that
you know in a big city
to be how young artist aspiring artist
what what what's that like what's the lifelike i think it's very wide eyed
and it's very complicated
uh...
i don't have the understanding i didn't have the understanding i should say that
i have no i'm not necessarily necessarily saying that i have that
understanding now completely
but uh...
how things work
how the art world functions
um... what the interests are of the various players
in the art world
uh...
and i think at the time that i was there
i was younger and not as uh...
informed yet
i was more interested in looking at how things were done and looking at
cool paintings and
uh... i was
quite a bit more interested in in the artwork
don't feel as though i was quite so caught up in the social
realm of the spot the art world
one of the things i learned very early on is uh... through
mentors which i think are also a critical part any mention of such
occasion here uh... i had some wonderful mentors mentors that words
even didn't have anything to do width
my particular career choice but talk me things and
the things that i'd do i was taught were
that i learned
was work ethic and passion
and
uh...
from the day that i went into school
i was
very serious i was probably a very difficult student to deal with as an
instructor because i would not let them off the hook until
something
that needed i felt needed to get in here dot in there
uh...
so i was more concerned at the time with those types of things
uh... than i was
uh... functioning socially
and in the art world i would go to the openings and had a lot of friends were
artists and
would invest myself and in that community but
for me it was
it was about
i suspect a lot of
young people in fact
lot of people think that
the art world is really the nineteen sixties
warhol
the factory
where people just drop in it
parties and intelligencia tenet share ideas and and it may be that some of it
but
i mean how how many people have uh... had their careers and maybe who lives
dash tunnel's rocks ah... you know that that'd it's a business
and it's a business that that end trying to
i would imagine trying to have one foot in each camp of
being this this
feeling person to to see things very differently than everybody else does
which is what
well below an artist saw about at the same time you have to function with
people who actually do look at spreadsheets and
and uh... you know marketing programs and that sort of thing and i think
that's probably why i would guess why
so few tremendously talented people actually are
able to
make a living at it
uh... recognizing that this is the
people business
and of their different
people in different aspects of the
industry if i can call it that have different priorities
an understanding that and being able to step outside of yourself and your own
artwork
i think is is is very important
i think it's very very important those skills that you learn
uh... you know when you're in at university or your here in college
those are those are as important
has
you know the sticks and stones
courses this to your questions
teor absolutely clear expected by the way i think that's true for almost any
endeavor that u
undertaken and you have to have the passion but you also have to work with
people you could even if ur physicist and you have to it's not enough just
hang around the web you actually have to talk about your work and communicate
your work
you you left this possibly life of the chicago art scene
in that he said the mid nineties rate
to to go up to
test oral sister betty yes and uh... that had to be quite a shock
ddl quieter i'm guessing it was an at actually the opportunity came to me
through someone that one i was
in grade school and took part classes from
itu private our classes for only he
introduced me to con artist opin sister bay named james a_ worsen
and he's a very well-known portrait painter
big-time a portrait painter and
it was suggested that i go up there and meet him in showing my work and look
around
and that was in nineteen ninety five
and uh... ten years prior in nineteen eighty
nineteen eighty five
uh...
fantasized about the notion that i would love to live in a barn
and have my studio in the barn
and live in a rural area well being someone from the city and from the
suburbs i had
no idea of article about doing that and it kind of
went into the sub conscious for ten years
then in nineteen ninety five i go up there to meet you mean worse and and
there he is
with the studio in the home and living in this at
this is what i was thinking about
ten years ago
this is the opportunity
he told me you know
performed as a mentor in a way through his
the through his own conduct in his own station in life to show me
this is what you were looking for ten years ago insofar as lifestyle is
concerned
so i was from ready to do it
ten years prior edges didn't know how to do it
um...
that was nineteen ninety-five and then in nineteen ninety nine after going up
in visiting a number of times i handed up
moving there
permanently woolsey so far so it was right
or clearly this is headed influence on
under work um... anybody that's familiar with your work knows that uh... what
you've been working on lately is
i don't know sitcoms i guess mostly rate
very very and very very yes and uh... i think uh... if people take a look at
what you're doing
and i know i've had this reaction might self-destruct or what
what's this
and the more you look at these paintings of
of noble farm animals i guess is the best way can't describe it
that you start to look
deeper and deeper in there and you can use can see
that there is much more going on than just pictures
of farm animals i mean it captures a move
a feeling that if you've ever been to work on me
you you can see it
so it's all talk about how you went from
you know through this classical
uh... you know when all the old masters and and living in their in in their
world
to doing what you're doing now
when did you make a transition immediately ordered or we were there for
a while before this really happened
r was there for a while before happens *** art history tends to
uh...
compartmentalize things quite nicely
and uh... we tend to think that
uh... you started doing portrait when you stop doing that and i wanted still
life and then
i stop doing that man i got into the animals and they kind of all over lap a
little bit but we are a product or burned byron being visual being a visual
person
i'm certainly influenced by my surroundings
uh...
animals
for me are a surrogate
or a sedan
four
figures
i'm i'm trained as a figure of painter to paint uh... to paint the nude
when i first my career i began as a portrait artist
doing commissioned portrait
from there
i would be
most well known for doing still life
and then from the stiletto went into
using the animals as as uh... my subject matter
but uh...
i'm off formal list more so than i am interested in subject matter necessarily
use the
the subject matter is platform but i'm more interested in relationships
um...
relationships of shape in value and color kind of the visceral experience
that you get when you
when you look at work
kind of where the animals come in and
they are ubiquitous
uh... there there are a whole lot easier to find his models then
are uh... a figure
analyst temperamental i'm guessing
uh... u_s_ for the move a quite
put it more in the two libyans that it is right that's priced
if you look at at your paintings you can't help but see a smoothie influences
that you've you had mentioned it before we came in here dig up yeah student she
uh... i think most people have seen the division picture of the man
you know standing uh... then you can see the musculature he's done number of
other studies of what the permitted to million-man yes and uh...
that's there
in what you're doing and you can see that it's it's almost done
uh... it's uh... it's reminiscent of that but yet
i mean there's no way that you wouldn't statements really what you're doing for
the use you know
centuries old kind of kind of work sorts of talk a little bit about that talk
about the way you go about creating
the final product that get you started sketching we have decided to man
usually in image will come in a flash
and uh... uh...
highways curious cats poker have something to make that tangible
make a note about it
and from there
i will work on
sketches and studies and drawings and
uh... obtaining reference material to do those things
that becomes part of a
vetting and validating process
of that initial idea
um...
so it's very much like day god take out was obsessive-compulsive in that way and
that's
part of what i find so fascinating and i'm himself
uh... admire him so much for us
is to go through them to go through that so thoroughly
um...
and then i get from once i've kind of arrived at what they did
the image is now open com from what it was initially
there now
launch into the actual painting itself
and i think
i at that point ending
in control of the paining
for the first mark that i make on the campus
with each subsequent mark the painting becomes more and more
powerful
in insofar as the direction that it's going
oftentimes the painting will tell me what it needs
and
uh...
therefore many times it ends up being something radically different than that
and nishal germ
exists you know in my sketch book that flash but came to me
i don't think i'm an epic
painter
i think i'm a little bit more of a heart of the corner of my eye count of painter
things
capture things are ideas come to me kind of all bleakley
and then the coach of the sketchbook and then they get developed and
worked on from there
so do you
i mean do you paint andy you have the studio that's a big studio that can
accommodate frankly very very large paintings
uh... e your sketches though you've been going outside in the open here is sort
of we think about uh... you know that romantically you think about the artists
pinning the pastoral scenes that is that how you do if you dude from memory
uh... both
uh... going outside plane errors they would say um... is of one of the
benefits of the job description
so i certainly like to take advantage of that
you know as artists regardless of how objective or not objective our work is
being a representation or or abstract our work is
uh... we still
derive
our inspiration
nature and i don't necessarily always mean nature insofar as trees and
past oral i mean nature insofar as what's around us what's in front of us
yes i'm very attentive to that and i will spent a lot of time sketching doing
drawings in the field i will also use photography this absolutely part of
the contemporary artists toolbox
uh...
i haven't gotten so good yet with the computer and with photoshop are a lot of
people toro using that far more effectively than i am
uh... but
so i'll use a combination of observation in nature and sketching from life
and then
uh... working from a reference materials from my own photography
and then also for making my imagination and from my memory of what it was and
what existed there which ultimately is the most important thing because
what art really is
the impression of something through a very specific glands
so i wanna make sure that that alternet image is something that's come to my
lands and is not necessarily transcribed perfectly from a photograph
so you've put together the show guard
yes which is
being successfully shown all over the place which is
uh... which is pretty cool
how do you know when you have enough for chicago when you're done
how did it mean huh
and then you must i must have hundreds of these things and then you pick and
choose the ones you really want it
uh... put together in some holistic fashion how do you know dat you have
just ask to be critical question for a painter
knowing when to stop
uh... if that's the most difficult thing
i have an idea before i a launch into a body of work
much like i have an idea
you know on the micro level
when i'd start of particular painting of a direction i want to go and not by the
time i get done in this particular body of work
i was working on all over a period of a couple of years
so it i'd be you know it changed
and there are pieces with in the body
that are a little bit different they lean a little bit more towards being
portrait like or being still life
uh... being more formal list
there are other paintings there there appears in the shoulder more of that ilk
but yes their are
uh... number of paintings that
by the time you get done that ok this doesn't work and
actually this is more appropriate to the next body of work
so that there is a uh... upsetting that goes on in in that way at this
particular show
uh... there are nine paintings there are all very large
um...
so i've fortunate didn't have to do too many of them
but still you keep you said you did all these in a couple of years take your
guess
you must have quit the work ethic
because that i think that's a lot of work
you have to have the work ethic you have to be
uh... carried with it spending time
alone
and uh... managing that time
uh... i can remind mother saying
uh... several years ago that when i was an infant i'd love nothing more than to
be put in a room by myself with some pots and plans and and to play there i
was not interested in going out making friends and socializing and do it is a
completely content to be by myself
and that says something tumko you know to me now
uh... i recognize why i'm able to spend long hours by myself
and uh... i work seven days a week
um...
i had the greatest job in the world why wouldn't i want to be there
so uh...
yeah if you do you know
to have to to put in the workshop close
uh... contemporary
wonderful contemporary painter
um...
he's he says
inspirations for amateurs
at the rest of us just show up at work and their status such a truth
you have to get in and
and work this very edison light
you know the inspiration and whatever's one-percent inspiration and ninety nine
percent for spring aspersions really true
you spent a big chunk of your career
now we just
working on your own work but teaching adventuring
aspiring
young people
and uh... talk talk a little bit about
while it's interesting to you why do you want to do that and what your approach
how do you
ring out of somebody something that's there but they don't know how to get it
out themselves
heidi of doing
kevin kiley
really enjoy
being a part of the moment
that someone experiences
uh...
progress
and they know what when they do something
and i will oftentimes they do you realize how good
this is
at south s
that's rich
i don't have children
i would imagine that expects the same experience that one hasn't
when they have children
sometimes
how okay
people have
uh...
but it so i enjoy it from from that aspect
uh...
i'd try to respect to the individual to try to get to know
who the student is
uh...
art education
even the mechanics
you know the studio mechanics education
is not
a one size fits all
so it's important to recognize school you're working with
uh...
also i work with of variety of age groups
college-age high school age
seniors
and there's uh... a different way in which they all go about learning
uh...
and it's interesting for me to because i learned so much from them
you know and from the experience
uh...
i was involved in a uh... mentorship program at the pencil schooler fish
creek that they no longer have unfortunately into several years ago
and what would happen is the state select some students just out of college
to have a show at their guns look ellery
and uh... they would assign them
uh... an artist
such as myself to kind of mentor them and work through the process of creating
a body of work i did it for two years the first year
i'm entered uh... a student of came from university of wisconsin stout
and then the second student i did the next year was from the university was
castle green bay
and what was fascinating to me is high
the
you know i i talked about what my process says i didn't talk to some of
the specific way i go about each of those things
but to talk about their process and how they use you know they're using
technology i mean i think i've felt ancient and way out of sid watching
holiday
you know produced imagery in their both representational painters at the time
when was this
the second one is now
become mom or not objective in this work i've kind of seen some of it here in
there
but uh...
it's fascinating to see this and to step outside of my own world you know as an
artist i had said you know you have to become accustomed to enjoy being by
yourself
and and i do
but i think it's also important to get out there and two
uh... to be with people and to to be in the community
of ours much like you and ask about what it was like to be in chicago
and you know and then the nap artsy
uh... it's important to get out there and to see them to do that and i've
learned so much
in door county really does have vibrant
are art scene i mean it's uh... it seems to have the right mix of uh...
of people appreciate that kind of life
and people that also uh... to appreciate art i mean there are stage in their
lives in a place in their lives where they can
they want to have
high-quality arcane false that's kind of any place to be thank
the infrastructure of support is enormous
and one of the things that attracted me to to door county was it was not just
for the visual arts
but it's for
uh... the performing arts
you know you have birch creek you have peninsula players theater you have
tap you have
uh... door shakespeare you have
i'm gonna forget some of them there so many of them i don't mean to
to do so give great wine shops great galleries and great weather in the
summertime i mean what else do you off
the fantastic work we're almost out of time that you have to ask you one more
question
that uh...
what's next
we're going xd
uh...
i'd like to think i do
uh... lisa have a plan but you know that that the path dithers right
uh... i have a show coming up in the fall at torrey foley rd gallery in
milwaukee
titled creamery
uh... so i'm working on that
uh...
i'm trying as hard as i can
to do the most sincere meaningful work to myself
that
uh...
engages
the viewer
and that's an ongoing
and i'm going struggle
so i will be implying that objective towards
uh... this exhibition that i have coming up this september
well that's great and i can say that you can't matt org
it at your stuff infected buck
folks are out there to get a chance to uh... google
craig's work take a look at it it's pretty cool
special can see in person but at least enough if you can see it online you can
see what we talked about
great thank you so much for your family for being with us today thank you very
much hope you all enjoyed our show until next time i'm kevin quinn
best wishes for good conversations from saint or workout