Kevin Lawler

ArtistPainting

Apr 25

Written By Claudia Elliott

I paint pictures that explore and push the boundaries between real and imaginary, and seek to explore forms that can be read in a manner dependent on the viewer, where say, an arm or shoulder can be simultaneously itself and a jaw.
I’m interested in our motivations, conscious and unconscious, and how we abstract our own collection of emotions, desires and fantasies to form our identities and how our abstracted identities interact with eachother inside the “real”, of which we are never truly able to exist in, there is a gap in reality between how we interpret the world, and how it is.
Truth itself has become especially muddied in contemporary socially political dialogues. Post-Modernist concepts on reality, particularly the interplay between the imaginary, the symbolic, and the real, where “real” becomes as intangible and unattainable as a perfect sphere, have simultaneously been demonized, and utilized by groups seeking to influence or radicalize a populous struggling to deal with an existential identity crisis. Truth and reality built on consensus being simultaneously rejected and utilized.

Pareidolia is a tool that can illustrate this reality gap, things are and aren’t at the same time, and change from viewer to viewer, as well as within the individual viewer themselves and which area they latch onto. I paint pictures that illustrate these inherent confusions we all have with interpreting and forming a consensus on reality.
Kevin Lawler is an artist working out of Chicago Illinois. After graduating from Pratt Institute he began working as a gilding conservator in New York City for private collectors, museums and galleries.
He's made paintings since he was 11, but has kept them mostly to himself until recently. He was born in 1979 in Syosset NY, grew up in the Washington DC area, went to school and lived in NYC for a long while until moving to Chicago, where he is now.

Instagram: @kevinclawler
Artwork by Kevin Lawler