How can paintings look so real? Kevin Muente, a professor of art at Northern Kentucky University, has captured that magic in his oil paintings in “This Land Is Your Land” Works by Kevin Muente. From October 11-29, his artwork was hosted by the Fawick Art Gallery.
K. Muente was invited to exhibit his work by Professor Steven Ziebarth, who originally knew K. Muente from graduate school. K. Muente’s work focuses on the stories the landscapes tell and how the people in them enhance it. The exhibit is compiled from 10 years of work where K. Muente focused on engaging the viewer with what he portrayed.
“I hope that as a painter, when the viewer looks at these, they are really interested in looking at the painting and trying to figure out what might happen next. Like what’s the next step in the narrative? And in some cases, I’m not totally clear about that. I leave it to the viewer and their imagination to sort of continue the story,” said K. Muente.
K. Muente’s process takes direct inspiration from the landscape around him.
“So, [with] these paintings, I usually stage a photoshoot with models. And the models […] might have had some situation in their life where I can use the landscape to almost enhance the emotive quality of what I want them to express. But yeah, these are all photo references that I take myself. A photoshoot usually takes maybe 300 to 400 photos, and from that, I might decide one or two of those to make paintings,” said K. Muente.
Before even starting to paint, K. Muente uses photography skills to compose his images. K. Muente sometimes uses Photoshop to alter photos or even duplicate models. K. Muente also utilizes an interesting perspective by shooting all the photos up, so they look heroic.
After deciding on what photos to take inspiration from K. Muente then can take a minimum of 40-60 hours to an indefinite period to complete a painting.
“Occasionally, there’s a whole backlog that happens in terms of the paintings. So, there’s still paintings that I want to do that I’ve been waiting to paint for three years. It’s a really slow process,” said K. Muente.
Tamera Muente, curator for the Taft Museum of Art and Kevin Muente’s wife, is one of his models.
“Sometimes he’ll sort of have a kernel of an idea, or he might look at some of his favorite teachers from art history to get ideas for poses. He also loves film, so he’ll get ideas from films that he enjoys. […] And then he’ll often print out a lot of different images to give us ideas about what kinds of things we’re going for,” said T. Muente.
Some of the places that K. Muente chooses to depict are special to him.
“Near where we live […is] one of the last undeveloped parcels of land […]. And he did a lot of landscape paintings there over the years. So now it’s basically off limits because it’s going to be developed. So, it was like he memorialized this place and a lot of these paintings here, our family portrait, are set in that location,” said T. Muente.
The title of this exhibit comes from a hope to bring more attention to conservation and the environment.
“There are regions of America that are in this painting from Kentucky to Wisconsin to the desert. And there’s things that we need to think about and consider in terms of conservation. […] Some of the areas take place in areas that have been clear cut for malls or developments and all this land now looks the same. Like, you can go to a mall anywhere in America, and it always looks the same. The forest, cut down because of it were really quite diverse and interesting. So just trying to get people to consider their environment a little bit more and how they interact.” Said K. Muente.
To learn more about K. Muente and see some of his work visit https://kevinmuente.foliohd.com/.
