March 28, 2024

Two Decades Of Art From Kevin Barton

May 27, 2016

Some people know very early in life what they want to do for the rest of their lives. Artist Kevin Barton, celebrating his 20th year as a working artist this summer, is one of those people. His art accomplishments began in ninth grade, when he won the Best Artist of the Year award at Harbor Springs High School, where he’d started working in acrylic paints as well as pen and ink.

Then he discovered oil painting, the medium that would stick with him for the rest of his career — well, after one brief delay: “I did one oil painting and made a huge mess,” Barton said, laughing, “and I wasn’t allowed to paint with oils in the house again.”

He’d already started selling some of his other artworks though, and after he graduated from high school, one of the first classes he signed up for at North Central Michigan College was oil painting. “I promised to be very, very careful in the house and completed a painting called ‘The Japanese Garden,’” he said. He’s been painting in oils almost every day since then.

“Since I started seriously painting, I’ve never had another job,” Barton said. “My parents helped me a little at first, but by the time I was out of college, I was supporting myself all from my art.”

Many successes later — including gallery showings, prizewinning works, Signature Member status with the American Impressionist Society, and endless kudos for his distinctive post-impressionistic style — Barton is still working from his own studio in downtown Petoskey, Barton’s Art Loft, which he opened 17 years ago.

As for that very first oil painting that he completed as a teenager … ? It will be part of his upcoming retrospective show at the Crooked Tree Arts Center in Petoskey. “I’ve been involved with CTAC since the beginning of my career, and they’ve always supported it,” Barton said. “This will be my biggest show to date, and I’m very honored that CTAC is carrying it.”

Barton, who recently has been adding some experimental elements to his artwork, is also unveiling a new element to his CTAC show. “This show will be a little different in that I’m telling the stories that go along with the art,” he said. The written stories will be posted right alongside the paintings; Barton sees this as an important component of showing people how artists create. “All artists probably have a lot of stories about their artwork, but the stories are told, and then they’re just gone. So I decided to keep a journal of as many painting stories as I can, and now I’ll get to share some of them,” he said. “After all, if van Gogh, for instance, hadn’t written all of those letters to his brother, we really wouldn’t know much about what he was like.”

One of Barton’s own painting stories has unique family connection. His father and his late grandfather both painted as a pastime, and Barton worked to connect all three of them through art for his CTAC show. “Turns out both of them had painted the same scene of a farm and mountains in Vermont,” Barton said. “I have both of their paintings, so I painted my own version from theirs; all three works will now hang together in the CTAC gallery. I call it ‘Three Generations of Painting the Appalachians.’” Because the CTAC exhibition will feature more than 30 of Barton’s works, viewers can trace his evolution as an artist. While his style is very consistent, there are subtle shifts throughout his works that showcase his increasing willingness to step out of his routine and refine his work with color and width of line, a technique he uses to translate different emotions and visual ambiance to viewers.

“Some of my older paintings are left just as they were, but a lot of my older pieces have been reworked, as a lot of artists do, so it makes for an interesting hybrid,” Barton said.

His newer experimental pieces also merit closer examination. One painting, titled “Blackstar” as an homage to musician David Bowie, is entirely black and white — a very different approach for Barton, an artist well known for his use of bright colors.

Two other new works veer into sci-fi impressionism: “Those are made-up landscapes from another planet, called ‘Space Moon Resort’ and ‘The Space Farm,’” Barton explained. And yet another is even more unique. “I have a palette (the wooden board used to hold paints) that I’ve used for eight years on location,” he said. “I retired it and painted a painting right on it — it’s a view of earth with text over it called ‘The Palette Speaks.’ That one is very, very unusual for me.”

The Barton exhibition is titled Paintings and Tales Lost to the Wind, a nod to the stories behind the art and how many of them are likely unknown, even by locals who have observed Barton’s artistic progress for years. While Barton does decamp to Key West, Fla., to paint every February for a few weeks, he’s a northern Michigan guy, and otherwise stays in Petoskey year-round. But while his aim is to share some of his painting stories, there are those that will probably remain more private reflections on his extensive career to date. “I definitely had a lot of feelings looking at my old paintings. there were so many things I used to do, painting-wise, that I had forgotten about,” he said. “Plus it hasn’t really sunk it yet that I’m really doing this 20-year retrospective. It probably won’t until the exhibit is all actually hung. That’s when it will hit me.”

Twenty Years in Retrospect: Paintings and Tales Lost to the Wind, the Works of Kevin Barton will be on display at the Crooked Tree Arts Center’s Bonfield Gallery in Petoskey May 27–Sept. 3, 2016. For more information, visit crookedtree.org. Barton’s Art Loft above Symons General Store in downtown Petoskey is by appointment only; call (231)-838-7085.

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