Tonight, an exhibition of new paintings by Sante Fe artist Kevin Sloan opens at Naples' Gardner Colby Gallery. Called The Peaceable Kingdom, the show continues a series Sloan started last year following a trip to England's National Gallery and Tate Museum.
Artists find inspiration in all sorts of places, and so it is not shocking to learn that Sloan found the animus for his Cabinet of Curiosities series looking at portraits of British royalty in two of England's foremost museums, the National Gallery and the Tate. But rather than emulating Hans Holbein, Sir Anthony van Dyck, Lely, Hogarth, Reynolds and Gainsborough, Sloan decided to paint regal animals instead of royalty or celebs.
Taking a cue from the ornate architecture he found in the galleries, rooms and halls of the Tate and National Gallery, Sloan put the tortoises, whooping cranes and carrier pigeons he featured in Cabinet of Curiosities in framed paintings that were partially eclipsed for dramatic effect by pulled-back alizarin crimson curtains. To further enhance the theatricality of the pieces, he set his regal animals against a landscape backdrop. But this year, Sloan has freed his regal menagerie from their painterly constraints and moved them outdoors.
"I felt I'd exhausted the interior motif," Sloan explains. But it was two trips he made in 2011 that prepared Kevin to make the transition to an open-air environment.
"While I was here last year, [Gardner Colby Gallery Director] Pamela Campe arranged a trip for me to the Everglades. I didn't end up using any of the photos I took, but apparently the light and natural elements began working on my subconscious."
It was a trip to Laguna Beach that caused his new world perception to bubble to the surface.
"I've lived in California before," says Kevin, who now resides in Sante Fe. "Having spent so much time in the dessert, there was somethign uniquely different and satisfying in seeing the ocean and the cliffs. I feed off contrast and juxtaposition. I find it invigorating both aesthetically and conceptually."
The 16 works included in this year's Peaceable Kingdom exhibition reflect this brighter, freer aesthetic. To preserve the ever-important theatricality of his compositions, Sloan keeps the trees, oceans and hills of his landscapes sparse and minimalist, investing them with a surreal, Dali-like quality. But what he withholds from them he lavishes on his skies, which are warm, luminous and awash in rich, billowing colors.
While Sloan may have exhausted his interior motif, he shows no sign of growing weary of portraying cranes, sea turtles and even toucans in a metaphorical balancing act with myriad natural objects such as oranges, bananas, watermelons and sea shells. But to get a guage on the direction his work is likely to take in the coming months, you'd first have to know the artist's travel plans for 2012. The trips he takes have a funny way of influencing how this magical realist is likely to express himself on canvas as he moves forward with his work.
Gardner Colby Gallery is located at 386 Broad Avenue South in Naples on the boulevard that is affectionately known as "Gallery Row."
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