Background
Farr, Sheila G. was born on March 29, 1951 in Seattle, Washington, United States. Daughter of Sheldon Grant and Helen Balich Farr.
(In the mid-1970s, at the height of his celebrity, Leo Ken...)
In the mid-1970s, at the height of his celebrity, Leo Kenney counted among his fans Alan Watts, Joseph Campbell, and Tom Robbins. Influenced by Surrealism as well as by Northwest painters Morris Graves and Mark Tobey, Kenney captivated audiences with his meticulous gouache technique, luminous color, and imagery that uniquely reflected the times. Kenney quit high school in 1943, on his 18th birthday, to devote himself to painting. Just two years later, the Seattle Art Museum bought its first painting by Kenney for the permanent collection. The gifted young painter rapidly developed into one of the Northwest's premiere artists, touted by Robbins as "heir to Tobey and Graves." However, constrained by ill health and a snail-like work pace, Kenney was unable to meet the demands of his growing fame. After his Seattle Art Museum retrospective in 1973, his output dwindled. After the 1970s Kenney had no gallery exhibitions. Now for the first time, the full range of Kenney's extraordinary oeuvre is revealed. Spanning nearly 50 years, the paintings illustrated show the systematic, disciplined progression of an artist whose work developed in synchronicity with the spirit of the times and, in the end, transcended it. From his dark early paintings executed under the sway of Andre Breton's theory of "psychic automatism" to the radiant mandala paintings of the 1960s to the final series of shimmering "geometrics," the works strike variations on a theme. Kenney paints the dualities of human nature, the vastness of the universe, and the microcosm of life on earth - in a spectrum of color as dazzling as any jewel. With a foreword by Museum of Northwest Art curator Barbara Straker James and a comprehensive essay by poet and art critic Sheila Farr, this book establishes Leo Kenney's rightful place in the history of Northwest painting.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0295979607/?tag=2022091-20
(James Martin started his career the same way a lot of asp...)
James Martin started his career the same way a lot of aspiring painters do―by imitating other artists. During the 1950s and 60s, he nabbed imagery and mannerisms from Mark Tobey, Morris Graves, van Gogh, Picasso, Chagall, and Calder. But the real source of Martin’s mature style isn’t buried in the mysticism of the Northwest School or the avant garde trends of European Modernism: it traces back to his days at Ballard High School during the 1940s. He and a buddy used to cut class and head downtown to the Rivoli Theater on Seattle’s First Avenue to watch the burlesque. The surrealism of those shows percolated into Martin’s psyche and his paintings―once he started to trust his own view of things―began to sprout the ambiguities of burlesque and the black humor of slapstick. Now when Martin paints a Northwest scene, it’s likely to be peopled with freaks and floozies. He stays up nights listening to the radical opinions on Art Bell’s radio talk show and he considers the Jerry Springer show a new form of vaudeville. Martin transforms the daily input of the media into the wild stream-of-consciousness of his paintings―for him both a compulsive kind of storytelling and a way of escape. Like his heroes in the Northwest School, Martin still considers art-making a sacred endeavor―but he figures there’s no reason you can’t get a good laugh out of it, too. In unearthing the story of this under-recognized painter, art critic Sheila Farr presents a fast-paced account of the strange turns of Martin’s career, as well as a fresh look at our standards for evaluating art. Martin’s swashbuckling approach to imagery, she discovers, was way ahead of its time. Using costumed self-portraiture and outrageous marriages of art-historical images with pop culture icons, Martin was Post Modern before the term was invented.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0295980923/?tag=2022091-20
Farr, Sheila G. was born on March 29, 1951 in Seattle, Washington, United States. Daughter of Sheldon Grant and Helen Balich Farr.
Student, Cornish College Arts. Student, University Washington. Master of Arts, Western Washington University.
Art critic Bellingham (Washington) Herald, 1989—1994, Seattle Weekly, 1995—1998. Freelance art critic, 1998—2000, The Seattle Times, since 2000.
(In the mid-1970s, at the height of his celebrity, Leo Ken...)
(James Martin started his career the same way a lot of asp...)
Married W. Paul Heald (divorced ).