I view Gary Kingcade as the quintessentially altruistic spirit. Delaying his own work in art for forty years, Gary taught high school children how to create. Now retired, he discusses that a singular influence in his life has come during his intercontinental motorcycle rides. Spotting memorials along the highways or along the bottom of canyons, he stops his bike to study them, then allows the experience to assimilate inside him to later emerge as an image on his canvas. "Empty your cup," he says. "Listen to your paintings . . . The good comes out when I listen to my paintings."
"Thoughts I had about how things should be done," he said, "I threw those out the window." Kingcade indicated that once he allowed a painting to emerge on its own, he became "a vehicle" to create it. He said that as an artist he "was not the driver." The new techniques that he began to practice excited him, and art became -- not hard anymore -- fun. "I had fun. It just happened. I thought art was hard. It's fun." I think that he experienced his recent epiphany thanks to the freedom of thought and preoccupation from his job as teacher, enhanced by the motorcycle rides.
Of the acrylic work shown above, Kingcade described the technique to achieve the effect on the canvas: he applied paint, and then covered it with plastic, scrunched it up, and allowed it to dry. "I was tempted to lick the canvas to see if it tasted as good as it looked."
Dust in the Wind, acrylic.
Above, I show Kingcade's foray into the juxtaposition of the painted image and structural architecture from the "Yard Gods and Guard Dogs" series, Sentinel, acrylic, wood, antler, metal, string, feathers, and ribbons upon which visitors feel welcome to write their names and well-wishes.
To Scare the Crows, Yard Gods and Guard Dogs series, acrylic on canvas held on the wall by antlers.
40 Miles to Green River - West, acrylic, six feet long.
Gary Kingcade, at the Kemp Center until mid-March, 2012.
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