Kinney, Mountain of...

Comment

Comment by Resident Curator on April 13, 2013 at 9:40am

Curator’s Comment:

 

(disclaimer: I met Peter Kinney almost a decade ago, when I saw his work on exhibit at the Freedman Gallery. I recently saw him and his work at Highwire Gallery, in Philadelphia)

I’m happy you’ve joined the site, and I’ll get to see more of your recent work. Of this grouping, I’m most drawn to Mountain of My Mind. The (literal) earthy sensibility of your raw pigments evokes a primal response in the viewer; we see, feel and smell the elements in a full sensory experience.  The cresting waves of the mounds of earth are both tangible and illusionistic.  It is partially this simultaneity of image and object I find so appealing in your mixed media paintings. Additionally, I intuit an interesting duality of form despite the shape on the right side being severely cropped. The gap between the two mountains is a place of contemplation, but also visual tension. The main formation is not centered and reassuring.  The blue-violet sky in this piece provides a celestial counterbalance to the earth, both formally and conceptually.  The smoother wash of pigment is a soothing visual rest from the inexorable physicality of the soil.  While the horizontal picture plan still directly references landscape, I sense a decidedly upward movement in this work, perhaps because of the high chroma cool colors on top.  The darker areas in the sky section swirl in faintly tumultuous manner, as if an impending storm.  Of course another read of Mountains could be on a microscopic vantage point; the viewer could be witnessing the coalescence of a shifting primordial soup.