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Kristin Kwan

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Kristin Kwan is an artist who makes illustrative paintings and drawings, living with her family and crowd of pets in Lincoln, NE. Her artwork uses elements of fantasy and allegory to explore themes of life, death, and rebirth.

“When I was growing up my family moved many times, and every new home held mysteries and secrets. I dreamed of hidden stairways that led to unknown attics, or cellars underneath that held forgotten treasures. I knew I could get there if I just kept looking. That low door is still elusive, but when I pick up my pencil or paint brush I can find it for a little while. When I paint I try to bring some of that magic country back with me.” – Kristin Kwan

a close up of a giraffe

Kristin Kwan Interview

What did you want to be when you were growing up?
A paleontologist.

What is the best piece of advice you have ever received?
Keep starting, that is the trick to productivity and progress. Don’t worry about anything else, just start, and start again, and start again, all day.

Who is the one person, dead or alive, that you would like to have dinner with and why?
Terence McKenna.

Where is your favorite place?
There’s this place that lives in my memory, from when I was a child, it was down the dirt road we lived on, in someone’s back 40, you went through a swampy place full of nettles, through blackberry brambles maybe 10 feet tall, and there was an old apple orchard, it felt enclosed from the world and timeless.

Who are your biggest influences?
Robert Bateman, 20th-century surrealists, mid-century sci-fi and fantasy cover artists

What can’t you live without?
Free time

What is your dream project?
Oh, it’s always the next thing, the next painting is always the dream project.

What’s your favorite artwork?
The Virgin of the Rocks, by DaVinci (the Louvre version), also the Rolin Madonna by Van Eyck

What is currently on your playlist?
Age of Adz by Sufjan Stevens, a lot of Joni Mitchell, endless Alan Watts youtube lectures

What are your last three Google searches?
I’ll never tell.

What gives you life?
Going for a run that hurts

What is your superpower?
Total obsession

What is your Kryptonite?
4:00 in the afternoon

If you could visit any artist’s studio, whose would you visit and why?
I would love to visit an old renaissance-type art studio, the workshop kind, and see the apprentices at work and the slow process of it all. What I really want to see is the Ghent Altarpiece in progress in the workshop, I’d stop in there.

What was the last thing you bought?
A book

What ideas are you currently pondering or questioning?
How to achieve some kind of work/life balance, how to let go of the endless desire for control

What do most people believe that you do not?
In free will

What is one thing you believe that most people do not?
Breakfast is totally unnecessary

What imaginary place would you love to visit?
Finn and Jake’s treehouse, the waterlily sea at the end of the ocean in Narnia, Green Gables

What is your favorite thing in the world, and why?
My family

If you could collaborate with anyone, who would it be, and why?
A musician for album art, but I don’t listen to enough music to know who

What’s next for you?
Leaping into that void of tomorrow, also a few group shows this year

GOLDEN AFTERNOON: A KRISTEN KWAN SOLO EXHIBITION

August 13, 2022 – August 28, 2022

Gallery Nucleus welcomes Kristin Kwan with her first solo exhibition at the gallery, featuring a collection of brand new personal artwork.

Opening Reception / Aug 13, 5:00PM – 8:00PM

Gallery Nucleus
210 East Main St
Alhambra, CA 91801

MORE DETAILS

Richard Fishman: BREAK, BLOW, BURN

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Richard Fishman: BREAK, BLOW, BURN

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Drawing from sources across the natural world, and driven by relentless curiosity, Richard Fishman’s sculpture practice spans more than fifty years.

Fishman’s creations are both engaging and beautiful. They draw you in with their allusions to the familiar in nature and beguile using opposing tensions within each piece. The complexity of the surface and its counterpoint opacity and transparency all allow him to uncover mysteries and then recover them with mysteries of his own.

Fishman has an enduring interest in combining a considered artistic approach with the operation of random incidents to generate new forms. As a result his finished work  seems to be in a constant state of flux. The new works, mostly colored are built on a core of bronze or styrene explore new avenues attempting to give shape to color, embedding the color in the sculpture rather than using it simply as a surface coating. The use of color in this way pushes the mutability of the form so that it appears to be in constant motion, almost filmic, flowing.

This way of engaging with color as sculpture carries forward several art historical strands that have skirted this issue but not resolved it. The leap that Fishman is taking is based on his observations of the natural world- lava flows, meteorites, coral growth- where color is intrinsic to and inseparable from the observed form.

Fishman continues to embrace his life long exploration of the complexities of nature.  To realize the consequences of this new branch of his thinking he is creating objects that are a new way of looking at his source material: nature through a new prism.

Richard Fishman Interview
September 14 – October 15, 2021 Leila Heller Gallery

Philippe Charles Jacquet: Les Reclus (27 April–19 May, 2019)

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Will you be in New York City in April? Then you can’t miss Philippe Charles Jacquet’s surrealistic landscapes.

Philippe Charles Jacquet is an architectural painter: his haunting surrealistic landscapes are an exercise in precision, layered variety, and esoterism

Opening Reception on 27 April, 2019, 6-8pm
RSVP Required: info@hugogalerie.com

Les Reclus is a solo exhibition featuring the carefully articulated dreamscapes of Philippe Charles Jacquet to be exhibited at the Hugo Galerie in New York City. The show introduces new pieces by the artist in his celebrated style in which he builds his watery worlds with various and highly planned painting techniques.

Les Reclus’ title is more relevant to his canvas’ structural capacity than their figural; while most canvases contain more than one figure, rarely does a canvas contain more than one structure. The reclusivity of Jacquet’s built environments, dramatically poised within surreal and stretching landscapes, lends his paintings an enigmatic quality. Adding to their mystery is the fact that they cannot be quickly dismissed as make-believe—they are too realistic, too aligned with our own experiences of stone houses, wooden rowboats, reflection pools, receding tides, and cloud-filled horizons. Even the slope of a figure’s slouching shoulders is too… personal.

Jacquet is an architectural painter; he plans his landscapes and their built environments with measured precision, constructing them in a layered variety of media and methods until they are as real as they are imagined. The materiality finessed, from mirror-like water to rust-scored wood grain, brings his painted compositions to life. The combination of textures, geometric accuracy, and concise colors creates an esotericism that includes viewers rather than excludes them; Jacquet’s solitary structures do not reject but envelop the viewer with the familiarity of a feeling. As if we’ve been here before. Perhaps in a dream.

Hugo Galerie is a fine art gallery in New York City specializing in contemporary figurative painting and sculpture. The gallery represents an international roster of artists working in a variety of media and range of genres.

Le Reclus, oil on board, 311⁄2″ x 311⁄2″ (80 x 80cm)
Le Port d’Attache, oil on board, 283⁄4” x 351⁄2” (73 x 90.2cm)
Une Soirée Ordinaire, oil on board, 471⁄4″ x 471⁄4″ (120 x 120cm)

See Jacquet’s previous feature in Surrealism Today from 2015.

“Memento Mori” Exhibition

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Memento mori (Latin: “remember death”) is the theory and practice of reflection on mortality, especially as a means of considering the vanity of earthly life and the transient nature of all earthly goods and pursuits.

The group exhibit at Star Gallery NYC will showcase the work of dozens of prominent artists’ personal explorations of this theme. Award-winning artists include Marshall Arisman, Chris Buzelli, Leslie Cober-Gentry, Katherine Streeter, Jason Limon, Gary Taxali, Anthony Freda, Victor Stabin, Steven Tabbutt, Skull-A-Day founder, Noah Scalin, Kevin Champeny, Zoltron, Dan Zollinger, Billy The Artist, Craig LaRotonda, James Hoston, James Yang, Peter Devito, Caitlin McCormack, Santiago Caruso, Rhett Hutchence, Gary Kroman, Eric Probst, Kevin Pyle, Danielle Mercado and Estephany Lopez.

Star Gallery NYC

Star Gallery NYC will also present a painting by the legendary Marshall Arisman. Arisman’s paintings are part of the permanent collections of the Brooklyn Museum, the Smithsonian, and the Museum of American Art. Arisman’s show Sacred Monkeys was the first American exhibit to be shown in Mainland China.

Skull-laden imagery looms large throughout art history, from the Aztecs to Damien Hirst. This show will present a unique and exciting collection. Much of the art in the group show at Star Gallery NYC is the stuff of dreams and macabre fantasies, but this theme also rings true as an affirmation of life rather than a celebration of death. There is dark humor, elegant craftsmanship, and masterful skills all at play in this eclectic exhibition.

Star Gallery NYC’s exhibition includes the most interesting artists who are delving into this iconography, and the gallery is exhibiting the selected works together in one gallery space for a limited time next month.

Star Gallery NYC specializes in showing the best of pop-surrealism and cutting-edge illustration. Death is the great unifier and its most potent symbol, the skull, is a reminder that humanity is alike under the skin — it is one. The work in this show is spiritual and timeless, and it is an exhibition of which Star Gallery NYC is particularly proud.

The show will include original paintings, drawings, prints, and sculptures created by a global selection of artists. The artworks are all for sale and Star Gallery NYC offers works suited for a range of collectors. Curated by Anthony and Amber Freda.

A portion of the proceeds will go to benefit Haitian orphans.

The exhibition will be on view Jan. 16 through Jan. 20. The opening reception is on Saturday, Jan. 19, 2019, at 2 Rivington Street, on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. The event is free and open to the general public.

About Star Gallery NYC

Star Gallery NYC is an art gallery on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. The gallery frequently exhibits art that falls into the categories of Pop-Surrealism, Lowbrow, Comix, and contemporary illustration.
Learn more at stargallerynyc.com.

Carl Jennings and Tammy Eilyn Jennings

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You are invited to an exhibition of new work by Carl and Tammy Eilyn Jennings at the forthcoming Aloha Ho’omaluhia XXXIII exhibition, May 1st – 29th at Ho’omaluhaia Gardens in Kaneohe. The show will feature new digital collages by Tammy as well as two new figurative paintings by Carl. The work deals with overlapping interests that focus on immigration, the environment and the need for hope and change.

Carl Jennings

Tammy Eilyn Jennings
New Work: Carl Jennings & Tammy Eilyn Jennings
Ho’omaluhai Botanical Gardens, Kāne’ohe, Hawai’i
May 1st – 28th, 2017
Opening reception, Sunday April 30th, 4-6pm.