Kevin Kearns

Kevin Kearns' landscapes come from a place where memory, reality and imagination are combined. They are atmospheric, sensual and continue to evolve overtime, allowing us, the viewer, to glimpse and to enter into a splice of his world. We are allowed and invited to dream, to fly over, walk around, live in and to contemplate that world. It is seductive and enticing, and comes from very specific memories of places, that have fascinated Kearns; whether it be from the Hudson Valley where his current studio is located or locations such as the New England seacoast, Iceland and Europe. 

The resulting landscape images are full of light, space, color, softly undulating hills that disappear and reappear, with broad expansive skies, and yet, little sense of human presence or architecture; combining a strong sense of abstract with the organic and essentially allowing nature, to be nature. The oil paint is allowed to drip, build up, or be scraped back, resulting in the totality of the final image to evoke, varied emotive qualities that tap into Kearns' very personal response to the subject matter.

Originally from Boston; MA, Kearns studied at the Art Institute of Boston. He led a previous career as an Art and Creative Director. He was well respected and considered very highly by his peers. His work received nominations, awards and various accolades, such as  'Lions' from the Cannes Film Festival and a nomination for an Emmy. This creative work appeared, was featured and published in various design publications including 'Communication Arts', the 'British Art Directors Annual' and 'Graphis Poster, to name a few.. His clients were wide and varied reaching visual audiences such as the Whitney Museum.  Throughout his career, Kearns was constantly interested and obsessed with the quality and immediate response that working by hand could achieve. Having immersed himself in the business of art direction in film and 2-d work for many years, his vast experience and curiosity with composition, structure and color, was already ingrained, making it an easy transition when he chose to turn his back on the money making side of art to move to the country and begin recording his own observations of landscape, a journey that he had initially begun at the age of 14. Kearns continues to push his own visionary landscape images, enhanced by the many tools acquired throughout his life time as a director/creator, with an emotive quality and metaphor that enlivens and makes his landscapes, deeply contemplative, personal and accessible to like minded viewers.

Kearns has had various solo and group exhibitions and his work is housed in many private and corporate collections throughout North America, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East.

He currently lives, teaches and works in the New York Hudson Valley. 

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