Kevin L. O’Brien
gy of the subject into separate snippets that then fit back together in a manner that makes the whole clear! The effects of Surrealism on my work helped break things up into new arrangements, pieces, relationships, even melding forms together. Its super-focus and startling sharpness helped provide a basis for the glistening effects I like to add to some works, as if glowing within an industrial subway, or a modern cave. The rearrangement of shape and form helped me to melt normal shapes into new forms, which could better be used to express their industrial energy. I do not feel that use of the basic materials of painting has been exhausted, or that art now must explore new materials/media to be able to make a valid statement. New media often provides a false feeling of physical, conceptual innovation that ends up ringing hollow. Finally, since, to me, the spiritual is directly self-evident, it is also present in my work. The political and socio-political world are foreign to my art. Kevin L. O'Brien (kLoB), a short Bio Education: Bachelor of Fine Arts, Painting - University Of Massachusetts, Cum Laude 1974 Studied with John Grillo, a student of Hans Hoffman. 1976 – 1979 Had produced a large body of works. Began to show my work to various art establishments, hoping to get exhibited. Met with Carl Belz, at Rose Art Gallery at Brandeis. He reviewed my slides and decided to come to look at my work. At about the same time, I showed my work to Gillian Levine, a co-curator with Elisabeth Sussman at the ICA, in Boston. She viewed my slides, then wanted to see it exhibited. I set up an exhibit in my yard, cellar and garage with about 40 works, some of them large (you can some of the exhbits on my Web site). Giilian came in the morning, and then Carl came in the afternon.They both were encouraging.
trial-scape. I try to develop a symbol from pseudo-figurative state, along a continuum until it becomes my own. The symbols might be fashioned more in the brute manner of Dubuf-fet, young children or early cultures, as fit more with expressionistic force. But this work cannot be relegated as being "Art Brut", or stereotyped in a similar manner because of its continuous relevant innovation in industrialism. I try to break the ener-
1979 - Helen Shlien Gallery on Congress St. in Boston was also encouraging after viewing my slides. 1979 - I procured a month long exhibit at Boston City Hall in a long corridor. Please see Web site, http://www.klobart.com, for more recent exhibition history.
45