Celebrated Taos Artist Paintings may be viewed at the The Michael McCormick Gallery in
the old JC Penny building off the main plaza and intersection in the heart
of downtown Taos
The historic pots that Kevin is now painting are from Acoma, Zia, Zuni, Santa Ana, Santo Domingo, San Ildefonso of New Mexico and Hopi in Arizona. Each of these pueblos had designs so different from each other, a practice still followed today, that the variety provides the artist with plenty of work for the future.
Kevin is a fan of multi vitamins and minerals which he not only takes, but gives as Christmas presents to his family each year. He is a firm believer that good health contributes to success.
HMS Crown, Inc.
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Kevin McDermott
HMS Crown takes pride in welcoming Kevin McDermott of Taos, New Mexico
into the HMS Crown Gallery
of Beautiful People.
Taos, New Mexico became his home in 1995, when he built a home studio where he continues his work and studies. Prior to moving to Taos, Kevin said that in 1989 he visited an artist's studio, where he began learning graphic art by watching the artist paint a picture of a Santo Domingo dough bowl. "I wondered if I could learn to paint like that, if I could paint accurate pictures of those ancient pots with authentic old designs. It seemed I could honor or pay respect to people I didn't even know through the work they had left behind and that this would give me a new direction to expand creativity." With "My idea at that point," he said, "is to reintroduce to the world, through my paintings, the beautiful historic and prehistoric ceramics of the southwest." Accuracy is of utmost importance to Kevin's endeavor, so he paints from photographs or from the actual pots that are from his own collection. He says painting with acrylics on watercolor paper seems to be the most comfortable method for him at this time. In an in-depth study of the history of the pottery and civilization, Kevin found that today there are 19 pueblos in New Mexico and one in Arizona. In prehistoric days there were countless villages that moved around leaving behind their trash and tracks. Among the trash and tracks they left behind, were the ceramic pots that would later help archeologists to name the people. The three overall names of the prehistoric people were the Anasazi, Mogollon, and the Hohokam. These people were named basically by the different ways that they lived within the environment that they lived in. The Anasazi lived mostly in mountains and high deserts of New Mexico, Arizona, and southern Utah and Colorado. The Hohokam irrigated the low deserts of Arizona and Sonora. The Mogollon lived in southern New Mexico and northern Chihuahua. These people learned about the technology of ceramics around 500 AD, from the people further south in Mexico, who learned it from Central and South America. The pottery started out very plain and by 900 AD. had begun to include slips and designs. Those designs evolved through the years up until today. Each of the periods of the design evolution has had its own flavors, as did the area where it was made. Anasazi ceramics are different than Mogollon as they are both different from Hohokam, in shapes, colors, and designs painted on them. See more originals by Kevin McDermott |
the
few techniques he had acquired in the artist's studio that day, he began
his study of graphic art. He locked the door to his Santa Barbara studio
and began the tedious journey from zero to step one. After tearing up and
throwing away countless pictures, he emerged one day from his studio to
show a friend his latest painting. It looked like a photograph; and he
has been painting to sell ever since.