EXHIBITING ARTIST KEVIN MUENTE

In the artist’s words…

The stories I tell speak to the soul. We may not know who these characters are but we still connect to their problems and desires. We empathize with them. Their world helps us to examine our world. Expressions, gestures and narratives frozen on the canvas heighten the suspense without full resolution. The landscape and its eternal presence surround the figures and offer a freshness absent in much narrative art. Like a film director, I scope out environments that will heighten the drama of the characters within, giving my paintings an almost cinematic quality. On occasion, animals play a vital role in man’s attachment to nature and act in a supporting role to complicate the narrative. My obsession with particular elements of the landscape, such as leaves, branches, ripples, and stones helps communicate the magical unbelievability of a place both figuratively and metaphorically. By paying attention to the noises, smells, and changes in light and temperature, I reaffirm a sense of place for the viewer. I work from life, from photographs and from invention with the hope of awakening the viewer’s soul. I paint with oils and channel the drama of artists from the past such as Jean-Francois Millet, Caspar David Friedrich, and Winslow Homer who have heroized the figure inhabiting the landscape. Figures within a pivotal situation secure a sense of the grand mythic qualities that nature rarely reveals but that are nonetheless relevant to us all. In this way, landscape can become a vehicle for expressing the human condition as much as do the figures themselves.

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95 East Bagley Road
Berea, Ohio 44017
(440) 826-2152
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