First I would like to ask, how long have you been working in art?
WK-More than 40 years...since about the time JFK was assassinated. In fact one of the first pieces I accomplished was a drawing from a photo of JFK. My mother taught me how to graph up a photo. First I practiced the technique on the back of one of my father's green office forms. Then I did a final version, a little larger, on a nice piece of charcoal paper. That piece was exhibited in my grade school arts and science fair where a curator for the Museum of the Great Plains saw it and included it in an local amateur exhibition at the museum. They had a large steam engine out front of the museum there in Lawton Oklahoma.
How long have you been an arts educator?
WK-I actually began teaching young kids in the early 70's through my parents arts and crafts and framing shop in Tulsa Oklahoma where I was raised. I had a teaching fellowship at Wichita State University for a semester in 1981. And I had three different assistantships at Boston University between 83 and 85 where I received my MFA in painting. I've been full-time at the Columbus College of Art and Design since August of 1985.
I hear you had quite an adventure recently during your sabbatical. Can you tell us about it?
WK-It really wasn't a sabbatical. I had an exhibition with my brother Tim in Cordoba Argentina in 07. I'd received a faculty enrichment grant to do watercolors in the Andes and to investigate the possibility of student exchanges with the provincial art college in Cordoba. I was just thrown in with Carol Griffith and Carl Garant who actually were on sabbatical at the time. On my way home from my month long stay in Cordoba I hailed a cab and on the way to the airport he feigned engine trouble.
Even though I realized he was probably going to drive off with my luggage I didn't see how to get around it when he asked me to help push start the car. I didn't want to get into a physical altercation with the guy because he was younger and much more athletic than me and who knows...maybe he had a knife. So I took the chance that maybe he was really having trouble and after push starting him I watched him drive away with all my artwork, my brother's artwork, my cameras and clothes and souvenirs. Luckily I still had my passport, credit cards and money hidden on my person.
There was a young girl across the street at one of the only houses on the block who saw the whole thing. I asked her in Spanish to call the police. She ran inside. A few minutes later an older woman appeared. My Spanish only functions at about a 1st grade level, you know, “me Tarzan, tu Jaunita!” so it took me a bit to understand that she’d called the police and they were on the way. Meanwhile it became quite an ordeal as people began to come out of the house and appeared apparently from now where in some instances. Soon there were about 12 or 15 people standing on what was originally a deserted street all talking and gesturing. Argentines are largely from Italian descent, so they speak Spanish as I describe it with an Italian accent…lots of hand signals!
When the two young policemen arrived and began asking questions there was no one to actually help me as no one spoke English. Finally, after trying to explain what happened I looked down at the little girl who had been standing dutifully at my side the whole time I said, “como se dice en Espaneol ‘robber’?” She looked at me like I was an idiot and said “robero”. Then she’d realized what it was she saw and she became my savior by telling the police how I got out and helped push start the car and it drove away…of course they all laughed.
Are you happy with the work you were able to achieve (during your sabbatical)?
WK-I would like to continue to re-create a number of images I haven’t had time to do yet…and I’d also like to do some of the images from memory I didn’t get to do even when I was in Argentina. Then I’d like to do some larger more extended ideas based on my experiences there. I have a number of ideas that seem worth doing. Otherwise, yes. I am pleased with the work in the exhibition. The work is not exactly the same as the original work that was stolen…it can’t be. There has been time to digest some of what I saw and see in it a deeper meaning. Hence the new ideas. For instance I began to see some patterns in the work done in the mountains that I have noticed shows in some of the native decorations from that area. Didn’t see it at the time. I’d like to play with that kind of patterning a bit…not so much as decoration but as abstraction.
Where do you find your greatest inspiration for art?
WK-I draw from life a lot…I don’t mean in a class but from the life that walks and talks all around me. I take inspiration from all aspects of my life from what I see on the news, read in magazines, from the things that happen to me as I walk down the street…even from my dreams and day dreams.
Are there any historical artists that you admire? Have they affected your work?
WK-Sure. Matisse, Richard Diebenkorn, Phillip Guston, my old painting professor Nathaniel Larrabee…. I’m fascinated by the work of certain filmmakers as well like John Huston, Robert Redford and even Terry Gilliam, and poets and musicians such as Bob Dylan .. . anyone who deals in metaphor. But while those things inspire me as does a lot of the art of the early and mid-Renaissance, the Symbolist’s, early modernism and 1950’s abstraction , at my age I’m as much inspired by my world view on life in general.
The works in the watercolor show are primarily souvenirs. But the trips have already affected how I work and what I paint about. Painting for me is about life. I don’t care about reality or try to recreate reality so much as talk about what I see., think and feel. For me art is a dialog with the person next to you or with the artist’s who have come before and will come in the future…I sometimes talk to Rembrandt. I feel a kinship with certain artists like Rembrandt. I’m a storyteller. I’m not as interested in conceptualism as many are today…I often find it tedious, somewhat bullyish, often vapid and often times feel like it fails dramatically when it has to have a long explanation on the wall for anyone to get it. I like art that is its own language, one that is instantly universal. Especially when it seems like a new language that I’ve never studied before and yet I can read it immediately. I’ve only seen a little conceptual art that I feel accomplishes that.
What exhibit have you seen within the last year that has most influenced you?
WK-Nothing much in the last year has affected me whether here or New York. But there was an exhibition several years ago, at a museum in Berlin… I’m trying to remember the name of the museum…Oh, the Watler Gropious Bau.. it was a summary of the art of the last century…I was, as usual amazed by the variety and quality…sometimes the lack there of… but mostly the beauty of expression of the art that was presented.
What do you want people to walk away with when they see your work?
WK-I want them to walk away feeling like they don’t want to ask me what I meant. I want them to walk right up to me and tell me what they think or feel themselves. I want my work to inspire people to accept their own interpretations and quit being so politically correct about the art. Art is subjective and opinionated. Therefore it can’t be politically correct….politically correct art is propaganda! Doesn’t matter from which ever side, left or right, up or down, middle, front or back. All art is in sense propaganda…some is propaganda that represents an artist’s point of view and some is designed to represent a party’s point of view. I’m only interested in an artists individual point of view and understanding of the world. I don’t want a party’s talking points. Just an honest, sincere person’s interpretation of the world in which we live. Anything else seems to me to be group think. Group think always scares me.
