Today we’d like to introduce you to Kevin Inman.
Kevin, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
I’m a painter, mostly of cityscapes. The built environment- architecture, the layout of cities, and land use in suburban or rural settings- powerfully shapes our lives. It affects our moods, our relationships with each other, our activities, our idea of ourselves. It reflects our history. That makes it an exciting subject matter for painting.
I wasn’t always a landscape painter, but I’ve always been a traveler interested in the world around me. I was born in Hawaii and raised on military bases around the US and in Japan. I moved to Spain when I was 20, studied there and backpacked around Europe for a year, then worked in IT after finishing college in Virginia.
The IT jobs paid the bills but something was missing. I went back to school and completed an MFA in painting. At the time I had spent years working on abstract paintings but felt a pull towards more recognizable subject matter. That brought me to San Diego, where I was fascinated with the way of life and where the climate was conducive to painting outside year round.
We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
Like most people, I’ve had struggles in my professional and personal life. In terms of my art, I had major burnout after I finished grad school. There was so much pressure to conform to pretentious expectations. Paint this, don’t paint that. I tried to put all of that out of my head and allow myself to actually enjoy painting again.
I had a nasty leg injury that made driving my beat up stick shift a misery but walking didn’t hurt. I began doing small paintings around the neighborhood. After I had a stack of them, I decided to try selling them online. It worked! I did a painting almost every day for the next three years. Landscape became a passion.
So, as you know, we’re impressed with Kevin Inman Art – tell our readers more, for example what you’re most proud of as a company and what sets you apart from others.
I’m not as interested in cliches like girls in sunbonnets, which we still see a surprising number of in the field. When I’m going on long walks around the city, I look for unexpected places that grab my eye. It might be something as mundane as a telephone pole, but in the painting can become elevated into something extraordinary. That’s my goal as a painter.
The first thing always has to be visual. That’s where the power of a painting comes from. You want to get behind that and push, to suggest meaning to the viewer. As a landscape painter, you are really asking people to think about the world around them. It might be about an escape to somewhere beautiful- the cliffs in La Jolla. We all need that. Or it might be a serious subject that worries you- climate change or income inequality as reflected in the landscape.
If you can transport people, if you can make people feel and think, that’s a successful painting.
So, what’s next? Any big plans?
Looking forward to a road trip up the CA coast and a trip to Mexico City!
Contact Info:
- Website: kevininman.com
- Phone: 619.786.7589
- Email: kevininmanart.news@gmail.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/inman.kevin/
- Other: https://kevininmanart.etsy.com
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