Born in Seattle, Washington, USA in 1962, Kevin Hoover is a lifelong resident of the Pacific Northwest. Currently located in Bellingham, Washington, between Seattle and Vancouver, British Columbia, Kevin’s work is and has been on view at galleries, juried exhibits and other venues throughout the Northwest. A student of an art-intensive course of study in high school, after a long absence Kevin is now a “re-emerging” artist, since 2020.
How did you get into art?
Aside from grade school art projects, my first real experience of studying and practicing artmaking was at the start of my high school years, age 14. I attended a pretty progressive school in a small town next to the Canada border in Washington state, where students chose majors…among my choices was art and visual communications, two programs taught by the same teacher. I spent every day of my high school life in his classroom, working in every discipline from painting, ceramics, pottery, printmaking, graphics, filmmaking and more. It was an extraordinary time, but I didn’t think to expand on it after high school or make a career out of it, and went on to other pursuits as I got into adulthood…where I found plenty of chances for creative expression, but not actually making art. It was just 4 years ago that I began again to paint and have not stopped since.
How would you describe your style? What makes your work special?
Infused with layers of texture, color, pattern and motion, and pure intuitive feeling, to name a few; imagery is secondary. Where it exists is either a happy accident or in the eye of the beholder…anyone viewing my art should feel free to experience and interpret it in their own way.
How do you go about developing your work?
The only common starting point in my work is a blank canvas layered with a material of texture before any point appears. The direction it will take is sometimes laid out in advance, but most often it’s not…it might start with a random stroke or strokes, a field of color, multiple layers of washes or anything else I might spontaneously choose. I the end I want there to be a depth to the piece; how I get there might be on a different path each time.
Who or what influences you?
I often take cues from nature—patterns and textures found in anything from trees, leaves, stone and rocks, cloud formations, waterfalls, sunsets—none of these will appear literally in my work, but they spark ideas. Other influences turn up in Abstract Expressionism, Cubism, Northwest contemporary art and architecture, modern style and design. The first artists I came to know and recognize were Miro and O’Keeffe; more recently, discovering Gerhard Richter’s contemporary work is what spurred me on to start creating again.
Make us curious. What are you planning to do next?
Recently I made some smaller study works of heavily-textured color fields that I’d like to take to larger scale on different surfaces (other than canvas). Also interested in multi-part pieces that can live together in different configurations or separately, each on its own. Always interested in geometric and graphical shapes. As usual, I won’t know quite what it I’m making until it starts to appear.
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