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.

Leo Kenney, a Retrospective: Celebrating the Mysteries

Arts & Photography

Farr, Sheila

Museum of Northwest Art

Kenney, Leo

Collections, Catalogs & Exhibitions

Univ of Washington Pr

Color reproductions of 72 paintings by the northwest US painter Kenney (b. 1925) to accompany the Celebrating the Mysteries exhibit showing at the Museum of Northwest Art from June to October 2000. An introductory essay explores the influence of magic and psychology in his work. A chronology, index of works shown, exhibits, and references supports the gallery. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Presents lovely color reproductions of the Seattle painter's most recent works along with extensive commentary by Farr (a writer and personal friend who refers to the artist as "Fay" throughout the text). Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Fay Jones

Jones, Fay

Grover/Thurston Gallery

Laura Russo Gallery

Individual Artists

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.

James Martin: Art Rustler at the Rivoli

History & Criticism

University of Washington Press

Robert Davidson has been a pivotal figure in the Northwest Coast Native art renaissance since he erected the first totem pole in nearly a century in his ancestral Masset village in 1969. For over forty years he has absorbed the bedrock art traditions of Haida art and craft, working in the ancient forms of his grandfather, the influential Haida artist Charles Edensaw. Davidson has taken new directions within the highly disciplined structure of the old Northwest Coast models--in wood sculpture, ceremonial arts, jewelry, and prints. Less known are his recent forays into abstraction, explored in boldly minimalist easel paintings, graphic work, and sculpture. Pared to essential lines, elemental shapes, and bold colors, these startlingly modern works insinuate themselves into a lifetime's body of work which has usually been labeled as "traditional." Robert Davidson features paintings, sculptures, and prints created since 2005, as well as key images from earlier in his career, that show Davidson's impulse toward an elemental language of form.
These essays investigate the complex fusion of sources Davidson draws upon, placing the work in the larger context of contemporary art, and examines the ways in which the work mediates the dualities of tradition and innovation, the spheres of the community and the gallery, and the personal and the collective.

Robert Davidson: Abstract Impulse

Haworth, John

Brotherton, Barbara

Marquand Books

The snake song

Signpost Press

Leo Adams is a singularly talented artist and designer who has been a creative force in the Pacific Northwest for almost 50 years. Although firmly rooted in the Yakima Valley, where he is a member of the Yakama Nation, his influence has international resonance. Generations of artists, interior designers, and architects have been fascinated, enchanted, and inspired by his home, his art, and Leo himself. His deceptively modest abode just inside the boundary of the Yakama Reservation has been featured in many important architecture and design publications. This volume features a biography by noted author and arts writer Sheila Farr. Linda Tesner , director and curator of the Ronna and Eric Hoffman Gallery of Contemporary Art at Lewis &amp; Clark College contributes an essay on his home and his painting. Michael Burns ’s photos reveal Adams’ ability to create Palladian elegance out of the humblest of materials, usually using his own craft and carpentry skills as well as his eye for finding beauty in the mundane.

Leo Adams: Art. Home

Tesner, Linda

Richard C. Elliott (1945-2008) was a nationally recognized mixed media artist who lived and worked in Ellensburg, Washington. Born in Portland, Oregon, Elliott received his BA degree from Central Washington University in Ellensburg in art and economics. During the 1970s, he made meticulous drawings of his friends and other subjects, weaving light and form together to capture a particular moment in time. By the early 1980s, however, he no longer felt that he could express what he wanted to about light and natural structure through drawing. He began to explore primary colors and light active materials, and by 1987, decided to focus on the safety reflector as his medium of choice. During the 1990s and early 2000s, Elliott created a broad range of work that combined safety reflectors with two-dimensional geometric designs: site specific installations, reflectors mounted onto wood and canvas, and numerous public art commissions, including the Hallie Ford Museum of Art. He even experimented with neon in his ongoing exploration of light. During the last year of his life, he turned his attention to a series of computer-generated prints utilizing thousands of different colors and geometric designs.

Richard C. Elliott: Primal Op

Hallie Ford Museum of Art, Willamette University

#BeastMode: What Does Success Look Like to You?

Self-Help

Lieck, Dawn

Rogers, Cindy Ann

Alderman, Gina

Partington, Travis

Miles, Brandi

Willoughby, Eric

Wedgeworth, Brandon

Lovejoy, ALi

de Mello, Jennifer

Motivational

Independently published

Unexpected Blessings: Finding Joy

Hoop, Liz

Nesloney, Gloria

Kizer, Kay

Valenzuela, Melissa

Meeks, Brittany

Immanuel, Joanna

Atkins, Pam

Religion & Spirituality

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Books by Farr, Sheila