Kevin McDermott Gallery |
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Southwest Art of KEVIN
MCDERMOTT
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 h "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 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. "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 Ameri 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.
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began learning graphic art by watching the artist paint a picture of a
Santo Domingo dough bowl.
ca.
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.