From the Focus Gallery Exhibition
The Addendum
All Focus Gallery exhibitions
contain three elements:
Work Description, Curator Comments and Artist Statement.
The Exhibition Work
Joseph Kinnebrew
Celestina Portfolio
2022
Description
A tondo is a Renaissance term for a circular work of art, either a painting or a sculpture. The word derives from the Italian rotondo, “round.” Wikipedia
The surfaces of these acrylic abstract tondos are extremely complex. Kinnebrew has combined various materials for texture, with flowing color achieved by changing viscosity and transparency, and added nearly microscopic hand drawn details inviting close inspection.
The Curators Comments
Joseph Kinnebrew’s paintings are as complicated as the man himself. These abstract works are a return to media and subjects he abandoned years ago saying he felt abstract had become too much a conversation only with himself. Fifty years has changed his mind and experience is a great teacher. A mark of continuing intellectual activity is the willingness to change one’s mind.
Instinct, passion, experimentation, and curiosity are present in these intricate and dense works. Artists are keen observers, some possessed with attention to details, like a composer orchestrating the smallest things with larger symphonic expository experiences. The autodidact polymath is fully present in these paintings. Kinnebrew’s interest extant in the cosmos, side by side with the microscope he prizes, used to peer into an existing world few have seen unaided. He aptly describes these tondos as maps, views of terrain from elevation revealing intricacies of nature and presence of human activity…look close for discovery, the artist has created new worlds of inquisitiveness and revelation.
Art is an adventure as well as a record of what has been, what is and what may be. The admonition not to touch the surface of a painting is challenged here and we know with some certainty that Kinnebrew has issued an open invitation to run your finger lightly across the face of these mindful creations.
The ARTIST STATEMENT
Imagination is one thing but releasing it, setting it free from one’s mind onto a surface and into the world is quite another matter. Each time I have lost myself in these paintings wandering, creating, and watching these evolve worlds of jurisdiction and wondering about their future. And that is how I see them…worlds…as if I am looking down on them, master creator in a universe among millions of others where creation is the implicant underlying order for activity. These paintings are not so many examples of visual presentation, but rather onesof curiosity and exploration.
I wonder sometimes about the why of it all, why a dot here, a pool for color there when I sometimes pushed paint with my finger, drawn a line, introduce a texture or suggested one. There are chicken bones in there, plastic wrap and scrunched up tissue paper, the surfaces smooth and rough. Similarly flat areas where intricate details combine with intricate and subtle compositions as complicated and complex as parts of an insect, carefully viewed and inspect under the microscope. Painting is far more than a pastime for me, it is an opportunity to travel deeper into myself then out again, bringing with me ideas and stories to share, sometimes with joy and other times sadness, always with a lingering message to recall and affect the next moment. Times past and those to come, burdens to share and others to celebrate. Perhaps somedaytime I will visit these places I have dreamt of and painted…there is always a possibility.