Kevin Kehoe – Western Therapy

Transcript

Carl Olson: Kevin when we talked about two or three weeks ago you were getting ready to go to a very special event. Tell us about how it turned out.

Kevin Kehoe: The event was about a painting that was acquired by the state of Utah – a painting that I had done as part of my first big, second series called Western Therapy. A series of 12 paintings that celebrate the west.

One of them was acquired by the state of Utah in 2015 for the state's permanent collection, which was such an honor. It was just such an extraordinary happening. Here I am – I've only been painting for eight years and basically two years in, this happens. And I'm kind of like:  “wait, what, really?” Anyway, that painting basically got a promotion this year, because it was selected by the new First Lady Abby Cox and Governor Spencer Cox. They went to the state's permanent collection and chose probably 15 or 20 works that they wanted to hang in their residence in the governor's mansion. The artists whose work were selected were invited to an art reveal event at the governor's mansion. Each artist got to speak for a couple minutes and make remarks regarding their piece.

It was extraordinary! It was amazing! A couple of things happened that I just didn't see coming! And I got to see where my painting is hanging where you climb the stairs to the third floor – an area where they hold a lot of their small public events. The ballroom is up there, but as you come up to the third floor, my painting hits you right in the face. I loved where they put it. It's against a wall with a kind of a sandstone red rock color. The painting has a lot of blue sky in it, so it really pops. Anyway, it was just an incredible night.

Carl Olson: What is the title of the painting?

Kevin Kehoe: The title of the painting is High West High.

Carl Olson: That's incredible! What floors me is you said you have only been painting for about eight years or so. What a culmination! What a milestone to have done that in less than eight years.

Kevin Kehoe: Yeah, eight years. I had a pretty intense and crazy advertising career that spanned 30 years before that. And I didn't pick up a brush once during that career ­– for lots of reasons. I was all in on that career.

It was very intense. I climbed the ladder and went all the way to the top. I was a chief creative officer and co-president – at one point – of the biggest agency in Seattle where 200 people were employed, and with lots of accounts. Some big ones that you have to hold on to – otherwise, you fold your tent.

It was a wild ride. I just didn't have time to paint. I was in survival mode. Anyway, that was just one piece of my career. My career was 30 years from beginning to end until I decided to unplug and truly follow my heart and devote myself to being a full-time painter. That was in 2013 January. And so now it's been about eight and a half years. But, yeah, I hadn't picked up a brush in 30 years.

Carl Olson: So you had picked up a brush before, but the last was 30 years ago.

Kevin Kehoe: I went to art school. I went to a very small, and wonderful art school that is no longer an independent art school anymore. It's now part of Lesley College in Boston. It was called the Art Institute of Boston – a very small school – which I loved much. Very intimate classes and a lot of quality time with faculty and teachers who were amazing. I just loved every second of it.

I thought I was ready to dive into a career in illustration. I loved it. Scouring the illustrator annuals, I thought I'm ready to go do this! But the reality was I wasn't ready to do it – for lots of reasons. I didn't see a good enough career path. I didn't see a clear enough way to have a steady income.

And I just wasn't ready for that. At that point in my life, even though I was getting work as an illustrator and I was enjoying it and found it rewarding, I just wasn't ready to make that my long haul. I found that advertising really intrigued me – no two days are alike. You're working on lots of different brands. You’re working with great creative thinkers, talented art directors, copywriters, and designers. You're trying to win new business, which is like the Big Game and every time is a new pitch. It's like the Super Bowl and you're trying to win it. It was very stimulating and there was a really great career path that I could see, and I was good at it.

I'm a very conceptual person and I loved the idea of coming into work every day and trying to crack the Big Idea and then bring it to life and produce it, and then see it on TV. That, to me, was a ride worth riding, and 30 years went by quickly. So here you are. My joke is that it probably shaved five years off my life! But it was a fair trade.

Carl Olson: So you are in this successful career. It's comfortable. It’s financially rewarding. What prompted you to decide to go into fine art which is something that is not easy to make a living at? What was your thought process in deciding to do that?

Kevin Kehoe: Well, my thought process was this: In my heart I loved illustration and some of my favorite painters and my truest inspirations started as illustrators – people like Maynard Dixon and Andrew Wyeth. And, I have a soft spot for Norman Rockwell as well. But to answer your question, yeah, I went to art school, and some special things happened for me in art school. I'm at this tiny little art school in Boston, the Art Institute of Boston, and the holy grail for illustrators back then was to have your work published in the Illustrator’s Annual which is like the Bible for illustrators. Each year a very small number of works get selected to be published in that annual and there's also a student competition for art students.

In my last year of art school, I had a piece selected for the New York Society of Illustrators student competition. And I was the first student in the history of the Art Institute of Boston to get a piece in that competition.

Carl Olson: Nice!

Kevin Kehoe: Carl, it was a big deal. My family and I went to New York for this, induction ceremony where my piece was hanging. I had done a portrait painting of the golfer Tom Watson. And it was acrylic on gesso. It was a nice piece. I was inspired by guys like David Grove and Bernie Fuchs and Mark English and all these incredible illustrators whose work was often on the cover of Sports Illustrated and Time magazine – all the big publications.

That's where my aim was. I thought if I work as hard as I can, maybe someday I could be on the cover of Time or I could be on the cover of Sports Illustrated. It was a huge part of me, even though I was running down this advertising path.

Whenever we were on production in advertising, whatever city or town I was in across America, or even across the globe, when we had any downtime, I would be in the galleries wherever I was. And I was just a sponge soaking up all this amazing work in every small town, big city, or international place where I could get to galleries. And so, for 30 years I was a fine art sponge. I was walking out of these galleries, feeling two things: Equal parts frustration because I was not painting; and just complete inspiration from the staggering work I was seeing that was just incredible. That went on for 30 years.

So, at a certain point, it just needed to be released. I needed to open this other door and run through it, but I needed to do it with a whole heart, a whole mind, and not dabble. It wasn't a hobby. I really knew that I had done everything that I wanted to accomplish in advertising. I felt the industry was changing for lots of reasons. Some of the fun was being sucked out of it. And I was a little bit over it. I was a little bit burnt out and I had just turned 50. I thought: You know, I'm a pretty young spirit, but I'm also a realist. I was turning 50.

Kevin Kehoe: As my wife said, “If you don't do it now, when are you going to do it? You can't do it when you're dead. So, you better get after it.” And she was my biggest champion and supporter, and really pushed me through that door. People were like that must've been a big decision for you to drop this lucrative career and basically one income stream.

It was a one-sentence conversation with my wife. When I said I really have done some soul searching and looked deep inside my heart, and I think it's time for me to paint.

She said this: “Go attack it the way I know you will. And you'll be great.”

And it was over. That was the entire conversation.

Carl Olson: She must've known something about you to know that you would have had success with that. Realistically, most people don't have that experience because there's so much insecurity associated with making a living, supporting a family, keeping the mortgage going. So, it's understandable. But she must have had some inkling that, you know what – you're probably going to do OK with this.

Kevin Kehoe: She knows me better than anyone. And she knows how I'm wired. She knows what's in my circuit box. And she knows that if I really was telling her that I really needed, needed, to do this, that I would really get after it.

So that was it, but did all those other things come with it? Like the insecurities and the terror and a massive life work change? Oh man, did it ever come with it! I felt all of it. I felt all of it, even though she was this beautiful wind at my back… I felt all of it. And I had to work through it.

I tell people that I had to kind of learn to put the fear aside because I was aiming very high, and I know how high the standards are in the galleries and in the publications and in the museums. And I know exactly who's doing what and how good they are and that's where I was aiming. It can scare the bejesus out of you! Instead of fearing all of that I just began to trust the journey. I had an implicit trust in the journey. I thought, this is the only thing I can control: how much I put into it, how hard I work.

I think one of the most beautiful human qualities is grit. Not everyone has it. But I just thought if I show some true grit, then I can trust the rest. I see this like a long and winding road. To me the most fun part of the winding road is not being able to see around every twist and turn. Trusting that if you give it your all every day, and you leave it all on the field, and when your head hits the pillow, you fall asleep because you've given it your all. Then good things will happen if you trust the journey. And man! Have good things happened! It's just made me trust the journey even more on an even deeper level.

Carl Olson: I like that. It reminds me of all those back country roads in Utah. You don't know the road is going, but you know that there's some kind of vista awaiting you as you go around those curves. That's a beautiful image you painted there.

Kevin Kehoe: It's true. And you know, the things that have unfolded are things that I would have never in a million years dared to think of or predicted or think would be these beautiful realities. I'm eight and a half years in. And I don't say this in a boastful way. I say this in a prideful way. I'm very, very proud of the things that have happened. I’m in the permanent collection of the Booth Western Art Museum. I mean, come on! I still can't believe it!

Carl Olson: That's exactly where I learned about you was at the Booth Museum. There's a beautiful painting that's about, oh, I don't know, it looks like it's 48, or 50 inches wide. Well, I walked in – and of course there's many fine paintings at the Booth, especially in the contemporary area where your painting hangs – but man! That one just arrested me. I said to myself I liked the way this guy is thinking. I took a picture of it. It just really spoke to me. I loved it. It's called…

Kevin Kehoe: Western Book Club. It's one of 12 pieces that of a series.

Kevin Kehoe: Again, this is the advertising showing up in my painting career. I worked basically in campaigns. The way I choose to come at painting – which is really important to me – is I put my finger on a truth that inspires me. In this case, it's a celebration. An adoration for the West and, what the West does for the human soul. How it feeds the soul and inspires the heart and gives you perspective.

When you're out in these amazing places, all these good things happen, whether you realize them or not. I wanted to devote how those feelings, those truths to ­– I wanted to express those in a contemporary way. I know we can get on a horse and ride a horse in the west and, and feel like we're back…

Carl Olson: In a Zane Grey Western novel!

Kevin Kehoe: Exactly! But there are a lot of beautiful ways that we now use the West that is more current. I wanted to express those ways. And so I began that series of Western Therapy paintings. In Western Book Club is a woman – my wife, Julie –and our black lab Ranger. And they're just sitting up in the high Uinta in a meadow. She's in a little camping folding chair in front of a kind of a 1970s camping trailer, which has a lot of charm and aesthetic beauty. And they're just sitting there, the two of them – she's got her coffee cup and her big thick book or novel. And there's no iPhone and there's no laptop. It's just her and her book and our dog. And she. That's Western Therapy.

Carl Olson: I think that's one of the reasons why this painting spoke to me. My wife and I, and my children have camped in a place just like that. You relate what you see with experiences that you personally have, and it may not be your experience per se, but it sure did elicit that emotional response in me. Oh, I love those days when we did just that! The mountains were our backdoor neighbors.

Kevin Kehoe: There's a little bit of subtext in that painting. This was a real meadow straddling two mountainsides. One of them looks like there had been a fire and everything is charred and is re-growing back, but it's still pretty barren and pretty chard. And the other side is this old-growth pine forest – these pine trees. And I just remember that stark difference between the left side and the right side. I thought that's a really poignant background because it's kind of like you're a little burnt out because of the pressures of daily life and the stress, and then you get up there and you get to decompress. And then by the time you leave, you're feeling more like the beautiful, healthy pine trees on the right. I put this trailer right between the two, and it became a very interesting backdrop for that painting. And in the sky, the clouds are kind of forming this almost angelic formation where it's like this human figure with open arms kind of welcoming you. There are a lot of subtexts in that painting that I don't get to talk about too often.

Carl Olson: I can't wait until I go back to the Booth and see it again. And now I'll have that context that you just shared in mind.

How early in the series or at what point in the series of Western Therapy was this particular painting?

Kevin Kehoe: Western Book Club was, I think, right in the middle, either number five or six.

Again, this is the advertising showing up where I really think long and hard about conceptually what I'm doing. I agonize over the titles! But I thought, hmm, a book club made up of only one person and a dog is the right kind of book club for Western Therapy. So, I think it was right about in the middle when I did that one.

Carl Olson: The first time I heard that expression – Western Therapy – this is what I thought: I'm not saying that it matches what your intentions were, but this is the impression that it made. Many times, we would go out West. I found it therapeutic just to be out in the big open spaces, the wide-open spaces, and the beautiful scenery. There is no place like it – and I've traveled all over the world – and there's just nothing like the American West. So, when I saw that expression – Western Therapy – I said, yes! That’s it!

When did you come up with the concept of Western Therapy? Was that before you started painting it or did it evolve as you were painting?

Kevin Kehoe: Great question. So, I had this itch as a human to somehow, someway get out, go West. Go West young, man! I didn't even understand why this was an internal calling, but it was. And I knew that I had to answer it. I didn't even completely understand it, but I knew I had to get out West.

So, I had a job offer from a small creative agency in Salt Lake City. The more I learned about this little agency and how creative they were, and they were doing some great work. I thought this is the door. This is the door to the West opening for me.

I took the job and I got out West. In the little free time I had, I would get to a couple of the national parks and places like Moab and Canyonlands. And I just remember the first trip down there, the first camping trip under the stars, and then waking up in these beautiful red rock canyons, and then being on the west rim trail of Canyonlands and standing on the edge of like a 1500-foot straight drop and seeing as far as you can see in a landscape, unlike any landscape I had ever seen. I felt like I was on Mars. I just remember thinking this is... I mean, I couldn't believe it. It was surreal and too good to be true and a whole bunch of other things all at the same time.

I remember thinking I'm going to spend a good chunk of my life in the West. I know it right here, right now.

Carl Olson: Had you ever been to the West before?

Kevin Kehoe: [00:25:38] Only on a family vacation to California to the beach, which was different. This was like the high west and this was red rock country and the mountains in Utah!

I love to ski, and I just love nature and wildlife and hiking. I just thought this is the holy grail. I still feel that way – only times a hundred. So that first feeling of like, oh my God, this is affecting me in all kinds of profound ways. I came up with the term Western Therapy much later, but again, that's the advertising speaking. That's a nice little handle to encapsulate and kind of crystallize all of these other feelings and thoughts and emotions that I have for the American West.

So Western Therapy became my first series. Well, I had done Chelsea light as my very first series out of the gate. That was to really demonstrate how I could handle light and spaces and textures and color. But then when I wanted to do landscapes, it was Western Therapy and it became 12 paintings.

In my mind, I'm still doing Western Therapy. I plan very much to continue the series. For whatever recognition or credibility, I do have, I'm really kind of known for Western Therapy. That’s because the series made up one half of an inaugural exhibit that I was invited to open at the Southern Utah Museum of Art – this gorgeous brand new museum in Cedar City, Utah.

And I was juxtaposed with one of my heroes, Jimmy Jones, a landscape painter and one of Utah's most accomplished painters. He's no longer with us. But here my paintings are juxtaposed with his and we're opening a museum!

Carl Olson: That's incredible!

Kevin Kehoe: Tell me about it. Yeah. And so that's what Western Therapy led to. It led to my first solo show at Modern West in Salt Lake City. A big thank you to Diane Stewart, the owner of Modern West Fine Art and one of the most amazing art collectors and art patrons and champions of art that there is on this earth. That's high praise. That’s why I'm so proud that one piece [High West High] was chosen by the Governor and his wife to hang in the governor's mansion.

Kevin Kehoe: Carl, the best way for me to really tell you about how I feel about Western Therapy is to allow me to just read a short paragraph. This is my artist statement about what Western Therapy means to me.

Carl Olson: Please, by all means, read it.

Kevin Kehoe: This really hits it hard and expresses what it means to me. So, Western Therapy, here's what it is to me:

“We all need to be reminded that the big picture is indeed big. Feeling significantly insignificant is the West’s wise way of renewing our sense of wow and wonder while simultaneously resizing life's trials and tribulations. The High West is where high-altitude air enters the lungs and exits as clear thinking. Perspective is gained and priorities are reset. It's where wonder and wanderlust were born.

“The majesty of the West ignites the imagination. It's where blue sky thinking runs free and dreams rehearse for reality. In short, it's where you lose yourself to find yourself. The wide-open West is open wide to possibility. It feeds the soul and inspires the heart like no other. Reserve a space for awe in your psyche and the West will fill it. Each time I immersed myself in the spiritual spaces of the West they stir my soul, spark my imagination, and reconfirm my love affair with the wildly beautiful relationship between landscape and light, person and place.

“Simply put, the West is good medicine for the human who chooses to revel in it, be fulfilled by it, and just plain feel alive in it. There are countless ways to get the West in your blood and be better off for it. These paintings, I call Western Therapy, celebrate some of those ways.”

Carl Olson: Amen!

Kevin Kehoe: That's it. That's what it means to me.

Carl Olson: That’s beautiful. And I love that expression that you used in there – “the wonder and the wanderlust.” I don’t know how to describe it but I do remember when I first had an inkling of it. It was when my fourth-grade teacher, Mrs. Cranford, came to my house during summer break. Now that's something no teacher had ever done before. We were a very, very poor family. And she shows up in this little modest little home and she brought a gift for me. She had brought me a piece of petrified wood from the Petrified Forest. Of course, not from the national park itself. She told me you can't do that. But this was a souvenir that she had purchased right outside the park. And she told me about her travels out West. And up until that point, I had never, ever thought of it. I didn't know that it was possible to even think beyond the borders of the state of Georgia. And that was it. I couldn't get it out of my mind, and I still can't, even in my sixties, I can't get it out of my mind. So that's why your words really reverberate with me. It really is the emotional response to what you're saying.

Kevin Kehoe: That’s a great story! We all have that thing that kind of opened our eyes to a different place and different spaces that are life-changing.

Carl Olson: What are the criteria for a painting to be in the Western Therapy series? I mean, there are all kinds of landscape paintings that can be considered Western, right? So, what are the criteria for it to be in this series?

Kevin Kehoe: Well, as an advertise ex-advertising guy, I'm really a storyteller. And to me, the power in these landscapes out here is when the human element is in the context of the landscape, of the space, of the light. And it's when that human element enters the equation that's when there's a real story and a real power. The power is the person and place in the landscape and in the light.

In each one of these paintings, there's a human element immersed in the West in a different way, enjoying the West, being in the West, being changed by the West. And that was the criteria was to go out on the road.

I didn't know exactly what was going to happen because I'm very much of the mind as a painter to not force things but to go out into the world and allow things to – I like to use the word – be struck. Struck is a great word. I allow that to happen. I allow things to come to me. I allow myself – to use the words of John Register – one of my true painting inspirations – to be a persistent observer. I mean to not just go out and drive around and be like “la la la,” but to really observe and really see. That is what I do when I go out. I trusted that if I went out and spent enough time in these magical majestic places of the West, I would see things and things would happen that would inspire me – and that they did!

The very first painting in the series – just to tell you a quick story to kind of color this in… I’m in one of the most beautiful areas of Utah, maybe my most favorite – Escalante Grand Staircase. The reason I love it so much is because the rock in that area of the state – it isn't just red – but it actually goes to pink and white. And out of the pink and white rock are these lush, old-growth trees and vegetation. So, the colors, the pink, the red, the white, the green, the orange sandstone sand, all against the blue sky, and some cloud action. It's really sensory overload. It's like, “Wow!”

Scenic Byway 12 was rated by Fodor’s – they make all the travel books. It was rated the most scenic byway in the world: number one.

Carl Olson: I totally agree with their assessment, my wife and I have done that very route, and, oh, wow!

Kevin Kehoe: Incredible!

So, I'm there about three or four in the afternoon, standing in the middle of Byway 12. I'm literally looking down at the yellow stripes right underneath me.

Carl Olson: It might be two hours before another car comes by.

Kevin Kehoe: Yeah. Well, it's a narrow road. It's not wide. And I can see this dot off in the distance. It’s a motorcycle and he's probably two miles away. I have this incredible view and I'm standing on this ridge. So, it kind of dips below. I knew that as soon as he got up to me and appeared over the ridge in the road I was going to shoot pictures of him. Now, the problem with that idea is that he didn't know I was there and he's going like a hundred!

Carl Olson: Oh no!

Kevin Kehoe: Yeah, so he comes up over this ridge. I'll never forget it, Carl! And this is really the birth of a series of paintings. He comes up over the ridge and I'm standing lens locked on him and he's going – I'm not kidding – like 90 miles an hour. And he gets up there and there's this two-second period where he sees me, I see him. He knows exactly what I'm doing. He's calm as a cucumber and just ever so casually flips me the peace sign. This is totally unscripted. I shoot it and I'm thinking, “Please, God, if ever I got a shot in tack-sharp focus – let it be this shot!”

And so, I turned around and he's already now like a dot past me. Whoosh! Now he's a dot the other way. And I run over to the side of the road, and I look at my image and it's tack sharp and I'm like, got you! Thank you! Thank you! Because he was moving so fast, I wasn't sure if I got it. I thought if this shot is in focus, this is the first painting in the series because that just happened. It was unscripted. It was authentic. I know he was getting his Western Therapy and he knew that I was getting mine in a different way.

And that was the first painting. It’s now in my personal collection. I'm never selling it, even though I've had multiple people ask me if I would part with it. I won't!

Carl Olson: Well, maybe one day that motorcyclist will make the connection between you and that painting. Wouldn't that be something?

Kevin Kehoe: Wouldn’t that be great! This is how I went out and just trusted that things would happen.

Carl Olson: So do you travel by yourself or do you have your family with you?

Kevin Kehoe: No. It's mostly by myself because for anyone else it would be a form of torture.

Carl Olson: Yeah, that's what I do too. I just say, “honey, I'm going to go out for a day trip,” and she knows what I'm going to do. I've done that out West, too. I just get in the car and drive and see what I can find.

Kevin Kehoe: Now we've done things like go to a destination and we'll stay at a nice place. They'll be there, but I'll disappear for two days. I wouldn't do it to them because I'm a very, very, very patient person, Carl. I will sit on the side of the road for hours and wait for the right light, the right clouds, the right vehicle to come by…

Carl Olson: Is he alright, is he OK?

Kevin Kehoe:  I've had people stop and ask, “Dude! You alright? Do you need help?” I'm like, “I couldn't be better.”

That's how it happens. Each painting in that series has its own story of discovery and authenticity of things that really happened.

Carl Olson: When you go out on these little expeditions of discovery to be struck by something that will inspire you to paint – do you ever do plein air painting, outdoor painting? Or are you capturing the idea with photographs or sketching? I'm curious about your process.

Kevin Kehoe: I went out many years ago and bought – I agonized over every little thing that I was getting with my whole plein air set up. I got it all. And it's all ready to go, and I haven't gone yet. I will get out there and have every intention of plein air painting because to me, I would love to cross-pollinate painting from life and be more spontaneous.

These really labor-intensive studio pieces take on average 100 to 125 hours of painting time. That doesn't even include the time of me going out on the road, discovering, shooting, separating elements, and making a composition.

That's just like once I get the drawing figured out and, on the canvas, or on the board, whatever it may be, and then painting. It's about 100 to 125 hours and some are much more. So to me, I would love to get out and do the one-day painting or two-day painting and cross-pollinate that energy.

Carl Olson: Or one hour or two-hour painting…

Kevin Kehoe: It could be. Yes.

So, the answer is, in my heart, I'm a plein air painter, but in real-life experience, not yet.

Carl Olson: Well, that journey will come.

Kevin Kehoe: It will. It will happen.

Carl Olson: I've talked to many artists and some of my instructors who really stressed the value of doing it. It's not always easy to do though ­– especially as we get older. It's just harder to do. And then schedule, life, the pandemic, and other things just make it difficult sometimes.

How do you collect your ideas then if you're not plein air painting, outdoor painting? What do you do?

Kevin Kehoe: So this is again the advertising showing up… during my career, I was so fortunate to work with some of the most amazing, accomplished, recognized photographers there are in the US and in some cases in the world. I learned so much from them – from how they approach getting a shot; everything about how they're hardwired emotionally; their patience; their determination. But shooting is a very large part of my painting process. There's a lot of connective tissue there.

It used to be a conundrum. I'm a pure painter and I wouldn't want to also say I'm a photographer. I just wouldn't want to go there. I was very guarded about it and cautious about crossing wires and letting people know that I do both. But the truth is I love shooting. I feel like I find a lot of my inspiration and light and composition through the lens of my time working with these incredible shooters.

In fact, out of respect to those who I've worked with, I don't even like to call myself a photographer. I call myself a painter with a camera – which, I think there is an important distinction to that because I'm looking for paintings. I really am. I'm looking at the light, the composition, I'm framing things up. I'm moving fluidly like when I shoot pictures of horses, I have to move with them. I'm not really ever on a tripod. I use the camera very differently. It's really for my paintings.

Carl Olson: Are you shooting primarily like with an iPhone or are you using a DSLR kit?

Kevin Kehoe: I have a beautiful Leica V-Lux which is the perfect camera for me because of its fixed lens of 25 to 400mm. This great range for me to shoot in nature. It has a lightning-fast sensor. The focal length can change in just a nanosecond. It's a great camera for anyone – for any painter that can't be out there and trying to change lenses. Sometimes with horses, things are happening fast and they're not going to wait for me to change a lens. So, it's the perfect camera for me. That's what I shoot with.

By default, I’ve ended up with this collection of images called Simple Beauty. They're limited-edition prints. I do them as giclée prints on beautiful, archival watercolor paper. And I'm at the point now where my Simple Beauty photography is about to be represented by a top-tier gallery. It's too early to say which one and where, but I'm going to have an opening in the fall for my photography. People who are interior designers and art lovers are coming to me for my Simple Beauty prints. Actually, have a separate website for that.

Carl Olson: Let's go ahead and share it.

Kevin Kehoe: The website is kevinkehoe-simplebeauty.com.

Over the last eight or nine years, I've been out shooting. If I shoot 200 images, there's maybe one that is calling to be a painting. It's very rare that I feel that way about an image where it's worthy – where the inspiration, the light composition, it all lines up, and is worthy of becoming a painting.

I'm very, very critical about what is worthy. By default, I've ended up with these beautiful images that don't want to be paintings or live as paintings. They want to be photographs. And so that's how that happened. It was never my strategy to do both and be making a living with both. But that's what has happened.

I've even been invited to have like these amazing – I don't know if you have them in your area – where they do these showcases of homes in the late summer and fall where you go in get to tour them. I've been invited by builders and interior designers to have these multi-million-dollar homes as my personal gallery.

I've done two of them. And in the last two years, I've had the whole home with 90% of my framed prints and sprinkled in with a few paintings, too. But the entire body of work has sold each time with the home, which I never in a million years thought I would. I thought if I get to sell one or two prints that'll be so good.

Carl Olson: And those are photographic prints that sold. You're not talking about paintings; you're talking about photographs?

Kevin Kehoe: Yes, but I think if you go on my site and look at my photographic work, my photographs feel more like paintings. You can see the connective tissue. I try to shoot paintings. They're less photographic. There's more of a soft, almost illustrated quality to the images. I love when the cloud layer is sitting on the valley floor here in the Heber valley because everything becomes a giant softbox – beautiful, soft diffused light behind my subject matter – whether it's a horse or a barn or an old tractor – there's this giant softbox back there. I'm not trying to shoot blue sky and clouds and really sharply focused things. I'm kind of making paintings with the camera.

Carl Olson: I think that's an interesting thought. My background, too, was photography first and then painting came later. I find that there are a lot of things that you learn in photography that you can use in painting and vice versa. I used to have a podcast called the Artful Camera, and I actually did a number of episodes where I talked about what photographers can learn from the Old Masters. And I intended to do a series on what can painters learn from photographers because there's so much that's interchangeable between the two mediums.

Kevin Kehoe: In my experience in advertising I got to work with these just tremendous shooters. So, it naturally came out that way for me as part of my process. I'm very open now about how they're connected because I worked very hard at my compositions. Whether that means shooting a separate road, or separate clouds, or separate vegetation, or just separate elements, and then composing in the studio. I'm doing that more and more now on the painting side.

If I see a long shadow from a tree or a person walking down a trail… what's showing up in my paintings more and more is me taking creative license and being more impressionistic with some of these signals that I'm getting from the image. Such as hitting a shadow with more color than it really has. Or maybe just taking liberties and letting me – Kevin Kehoe, the painter – come out and show up in a more impressionistic way. Even though I have a photograph as a guideline, it's only a guideline to me. It's not to be a slave to the photograph or to be too literal to the photograph. I'm really letting more of me just come out and handle things the way I want to handle them as a painter.

Carl Olson: Yes, exactly. You're not just rendering a photograph.

Kevin Kehoe: No!

Carl Olson: I don't mean this in a bad way, but some people might look at your paintings and say, “Wow, that's photo-realistic!” I wouldn't characterize it as photo-realistic. Cause I've actually seen one of your paintings up close and that's not it at all. There is a painterly element to your paintings.

Kevin Kehoe: Thank you. And people say that to me all the time. A lot of times! People that are uninformed about art will say, “Oh, it looks like a photograph. It looks so real.” That's their way of complimenting you.

There's not one bone in this body that has any aspiration to be what I would call a technical painter or a photorealist. I would quit painting today if that was my goal. I have no interest – because those people are talented, and they are very technical ­– but I'm trying to have some of my soul end up on the canvas and some of my individual quality as a human and as an artist.

Like this painting behind me [points to a painting on an easel behind him] that I'm working on is a good example. The foreground is this kind of short-cut grassy field that's turned gold from the sun. Now I had no interest in painting every blade of grass, but what I was interested in is the kind of horizontal stripes and differences in color that I noticed and observed in that field. And so, in a very kind of a more contemporary and impressionistic way – that's how I chose to handle painting the foreground in that piece.

I didn't want there to be too much visual busyness or noise distracting from this horse who is in that stride. And it's in that nanosecond where all four hooves leave the ground just for a split second. I love that, and that's really what that horse and that central subject matter are all about. I wanted to simplify the foreground, but still make it beautiful and compelling.

And that's kind of me as a painter. Taking cues and signals from the photograph, but not in any way being literal to it.

Carl Olson: That’s a beautiful painting! In visiting your website (http://www.kkpainter.com) I see you have quite a diverse palette of imagination when it comes to painting. It’s not just Western Therapy themed paintings.

Kevin Kehoe: You're right. It's not just about the West. I allow myself to be struck. I have a love for authenticity in places, beings, and things.

Carl Olson: What does that mean – authenticity in places, beings, and things?

Kevin Kehoe: Well, I really spark to and am struck by things in the world, places in the world, beings in the world, that have a story to tell and kind of reek of authenticity and have a soulfulness. That's really what inspires me now, whether that be a small kind of dive liquor store on a corner in Holbrook, Arizona, along an amazing stretch of Route 66. Or whether that be a horse that I meet down a dirt road who's running in a field. Or whether that be these beautiful, majestic Western spaces – landscapes.

I have a whole series of illuminated structures. The liquor store is one of them. I have the Chelsea light series, which are these interior spaces in these post-war gallery district buildings in New York where there are twenty coats of paint on the brick and the glass in the windows is vintage glass and kind of imperfectly perfect. The light pours in, and if these stairwells and hallways and walls could talk, they would really have a story to tell. They're authentic in that way. They're genuine in that way. There's a soulfulness. There's a reverence. So that's what I allow myself to be struck by and that’s the best way for me to say it is. I know it when I see it and I know it, even more, when I feel it.

That's why I've ended up with these four different series and lots of subject matter. That's me as still a new painter running through doors, trying to figure out who I am and where I belong. But I also think it's made me a better artist.

I've learned to handle lots of different subject matter. From a drawing standpoint, it's made me become a better drawer than if I had just done one thing. So, I'm very proud of my spectrum of subject matter. It lets me work on this series and then when I'm a little crispy from that series, I get to move over to this other series and expand that one.

It keeps things fresh and interesting for me as an artist.

Carl Olson: I think we as humans are project-oriented. I like to work on a project and then move on to something that may be totally different than what I was working on before.

Kevin Kehoe: It's true. There might be a gallery that loves my structural pieces or my nocturnes of illuminated structures and they want more and more of those. But as a new painter, I didn't want to get pegged with doing one thing. I just didn't want to do one thing for the rest of my life. Call it rebellious. Call it whatever you want. But it's me saying, “Nope, wait a minute!” I'm gonna paint some horses and they're going to be beautiful. And I'm going to paint the anatomy of a horse, which is not easy. But when you get it right – just that power, and the elegance of the muscles, and the proportions, and the structure of a horse in different positions – that's a very challenging thing to do after you've been doing liquor stores and bungalows with Christmas lights on them. But it's made me a better artist. That's just me being a work in progress.

Carl Olson: That reminds me of Frederic Remington. They said he knew a horse. But he didn't always want to paint a horse. Impressionism was making its mark in the United States at that time. And he wanted to do more impressionistic paintings and here he had been an illustrator for all these years. Remington, too, did not want to be pigeonholed. He wanted to be able to do something different.

Kevin Kehoe: He's on my shortlist of my truest inspirations.

Carl Olson: Let’s talk about your inspirations.

Kevin Kehoe: Well, my truest painting inspirations, both the masters and living contemporary artists – on those two lists, each list is 12 names long. And the reason I keep it to 12 is because I don't want to overwhelm myself with loving too many artists, because then I don't know what to do with all that. It's overwhelming.

So, the names on my lists are very purposeful. There are things about their work that inspire me and inform me so much that I try to pull threads from all of those 24 names and knit my own sweater. I'm not trying to be them or be like them. But there's something about their work – a quality – whether it be the colors they use, their palette, their composition, their brushwork, or the way they handle light.

I'll pull these threads and kind of knit my own sweater and hope that what comes out the other end is truly me, but with a healthy respect and an admiration for their work. I'm very kind of disciplined about whose names are on that list, and who aren't, and why.

Carl Olson: Twenty-four people – that's still a lot to think about. Right now, at this time, who would you say are the top three that you're thinking about or studying?

Kevin Kehoe: Oh, well… A lot of people look at my illuminated structures and they say, “Oh, you must love Edward Hopper.” And they're right. I do love Edward Hopper. I love so many things about Hopper.

Other influences have been seen in my Western Therapy work and especially a painting like High West High. I just had someone say this to me the other day. I got into a conversation with two people I met outside of Gallery Mara on the main street in Park City and I ended up showing them some of my work. The first thing this woman said about High West High was, “I see Georgia O'Keeffe in there.”

Carl Olson: Interesting!

Kevin Kehoe: I was like, “Oh my God! You just made my day.” My thing about Georgia O'Keeffe is she wouldn't paint a straight line if you asked her to. Everything had an essential, beautiful, organic, soft curve to it. And I love that! And the other thing I loved about O’Keeffe is her colors. I love Georgia O'Keeffe and I think sometimes that shows up in some of my horse work and in the linework. Now it might not be literal to the horse's anatomy, but it's not abstract either, but it's somewhere in the middle. I'll see a place and a reason to make a curve with a muscle. It’s just a little bit more me showing up. Is it anatomically correct? Well, it pleases me more. So that is the thread that I would draw from Georgia O'Keeffe.

These names on my lists have to be artists I can't live without – plain and simple. They're so profoundly inspiring to me. I can't live without their name. Hopper, John Singer Sargent, Andrew Wyeth, Winslow Homer, John Register, Georgia O'Keeffe, Johann Vermeer, Vincent van Gogh, Maynard Dixon, Frederic Remington, Ramon Casas…

Carl Olson: I'm curious about the contemporary artists on your list…

Kevin Kehoe: So I just got to meet this man at the Governor's Art Reveal because he had a painting in the show. It was such a kick for me to meet him – G. Russell Case.

Also, who I think is the most prolific watercolorist in America – Dean Mitchell.

Also, Jeremy Lipking – just incredible work.

Glen Dean, Kim Cogan, Eric Bowman.

A painter from New York – Dan Wits.

Logan Maxwell Hagege – I think I always say his name wrong.

Brett Alan Johnson – whose work I love – is a Utah painter and I think is just incredible.

David Dibble.

A painter who's not well-known – David Imlay.

Francis de Franzo.

Yeah, that's the list right now.

Sometimes a couple of names come off that one because a couple needs to go on. But that's why I do it that way because it keeps me in this disciplined zone where I'm specifically seeing things and feeling things that I think if they get passed through my own personal lens, they will help me evolve and stretch as a painter and hopefully reach my full potential someday.

Carl Olson: The Kevin Kehoe filter.

Kevin Kehoe: Yes! I think it's probably the single hardest thing for an artist to figure out is who they are.

Carl Olson: It is. But here's the thing, though… Your story is remarkable because you started about eight years ago. You hadn't picked up a brush in 30 years. So how did you accelerate the skill process so that you could create these beautiful gallery and museum-worthy paintings? That had to be a fast process because the painting that's in the Booth Museum was acquired about 2016 or 2017, I think somewhere about then.

Kevin Kehoe: I started in January of 2013. So, the first thing I did was I found a studio, which I was very fortunate to find that has amazing southerly light pouring in through these big industrial windows.

Carl Olson: So that's where you are right now? That's the same studio?         

Kevin Kehoe: Yes this is my studio. This was the old firehouse building in Heber, Utah. The building is about 80 years old. This upstairs section of a building is where the firemen slept in their bunks.

Carl Olson: Does it still have a slide poll?

Kevin Kehoe: The eye doctor downstairs – the optometrist – still has the sliding poll in his office. The bottom section is still down there.

Carl Olson: Nice! So, you found this beautiful studio space.

Kevin Kehoe: Yeah. And I'm buying all my supplies and figuring out what paints I want to use. Again, this is a complete mystery to me. Like what, which brand is for me. I’ve got to figure that out. That's going to take weeks. I'm ordering all these different brands and doing little experiments with them and trying to feel the viscosity. And what oil medium am I going to use? That's another complete mystery. The possibilities are endless. I just start trying stuff. And I'm like, you know what? It will reveal itself. Something will speak to you for some reason, and you'll feel it and I just trust that. So that's what I do, but I'm trying to figure all these things out at the same time, still having not done a single painting.

Carl Olson: So what did you do?

Kevin Kehoe: Colors studies just to feel paints and brushes and oil mediums and combinations thereof. You’ve got to start somewhere. So, pick one and if it doesn't work – what's the worst that can happen? You change. Big deal! I was just trying to be kind of okay with all that, even though I'm agonizing over it at the same time. Then I get all my furniture. It was probably two months’ worth of getting the studio perfect.

And what it really was, Carl, was me procrastinating because I was terrified to start painting. Terrified!

Carl Olson: The truth is out!

Kevin Kehoe: It was like the more things I find that I need to go get, the more I can put this off because it’s terrifying.

Carl Olson: How did you break out of that fear?

Kevin Kehoe: You know what, it got to a point where there's not another thing I need and it's time to paint and it's like “gulp!” So, I swallowed hard, and I thought, okay, come at this in a smart way. Don't overwhelm yourself, do something small and manageable and do something meaningful so that you are aiming high, and you have to come out the other end.

So, I had missed a dear friend’s wedding in Seattle, and it always bothered me that I missed this wedding. I just couldn't get there. I thought you know what? Okay, I'm going to paint something that's going to be a wedding present for this woman and her husband.

I shoot all my own references. I never would steal a stitch of reference or another photographer’s work for any reason. I'm a stickler about that. But in my first painting, there was no other way for me to get a picture of her dog. And I thought I'm going to paint a picture of this little Jack Russell Terrier named Axel. That is going to be Meghan’s and Aaron's wedding present. And it's going to be my very first painting. It was eight by eight square on a little Ampersand gesso on board. I took that photo from Facebook, and I got after it. I started drawing and I spent two or three days getting Axel’s spirit right.

Once I was satisfied with that drawing, I knew that I had a lot in the tank. The problem was, I didn't know where I was. I didn't know how much rust was on. I didn't know how much rust had to come off from drawing to figuring out a painting process. What kind of underpainting am I going to do? How developed is it going to be? How am I even going to treat these washes? The value structure? I'm just kind of figuring it out as I go.

Carl Olson: Do you take a workshop or watch how-to DVDs or read painting books?

Kevin Kehoe: The only thing I did was just before we moved from New York back to Utah. My wife had a great job opportunity out here and we needed to leave the east coast. We had been back there for five years, but I was never happy back there. I just couldn't wait to get back out West. But before I left New York, I enrolled and took a painting class at the New York Academy of Art, which is a terrific painting school in Chelsea Tribeca.

Each Saturday I would drive into the city, and I would attend this eight-hour all day painting course. Great instructors! There were only, I don't know, six or seven students including me in the whole class. We got a lot of in-depth side-by-side time with the teacher. And I did that for months, and that was my way of figuring out where am I on lots of levels.

So that really kind of got the rust off. So, when we moved to Utah and I set up the studio and started going, I wasn't starting from zero. I had been in the class and the instructor said a lot of really nice things to me over the course of my work and what I was showing. He really gave me a lot of confidence. It was great! My only regret is that we needed to leave New York to be in Utah and I had to leave the class earlier than I would have liked. I would have liked to stay for the full course, but I wasn't able to. But it did get me jump-started – those were the jumper cables. A couple of times he walked over to my paintings and he's like, “You haven't painted in 30 years?” And I said, “I swear on a Bible!” And he said, “Well, you need to be doing this full time.” That just made me feel so good. I'm hard on myself. I wasn't thinking I was doing anything that special, but he made me feel differently, which helped me a lot. And I'll always be grateful to him for that.

So that's how I started. I did that little painting of Axel and I sent it to them unannounced. They had no idea.

Carl Olson: How did they react?

Kevin Kehoe: They were bawling. They were crying.

Carl Olson: Ah, that’s wonderful!

Kevin Kehoe: So that was my first painting. And then I did two more in the context of keep shaking the rust off and just keep painting because I needed to figure it out. How do I want to start painting? How stylistically, how thin, how thick is it? Both? I knew nothing. I just knew that I was basically going back to 30 years ago in our art school and this one painting class that I had taken.

So, I just started trying to figure myself out. And I started… my first series was Chelsea light, this study of the New York hallways and common areas in the post-war gallery district buildings. I thought that's a really good way for me to show how I can handle light, how I can handle drawing a space – getting textures and colors and forms. And I thought it was an interesting subject matter. I didn't know if anyone had ever done the spaces between the galleries so that's where I started. I did seven or eight of those and they all sold.

Carl Olson: It wasn't exactly an easy subject to paint.

Kevin Kehoe: Make no mistake about it! You know, it was terrifying. It was terrifying because I left my career in the name of doing this full-time and giving my all to it fully devoted. To me, failure was not an option.

Carl Olson: I love hearing you say that because I often hear the phrase “embrace failure.” I'm more of the philosophy of Chris Kraft of NASA’s Mission Control during Apollo 13 where his approach was, “failure is not an option.” It forces you to think in a very disciplined way. Little mistakes are certainly part of the learning process, but man, you don't want to make a mistake on this! So, you think things through, right?

Kevin Kehoe: Yes. And Carl, this is, I can't believe I'm maybe ending with this. because it's maybe where I should have started by answering one of your great questions. I really think that advertising proved years later to be the ultimate boot camp for me to become a disciplined painter. My advertising background of 30 years serves me in just immeasurable ways every day. I came into this studio, even though I didn't know who I was as a painter or what I was going to do. I came into this studio with so much discipline and so much – just Moxie – because of what I learned in advertising. I approach my painting strategically.

I have the work ethic from burning the midnight oil and working weekends and just insane hours and demands and under crazy pressure. I work in series like advertising campaigns. I know all about presentation and storytelling and how to write and how to create a brand for myself. And my time with the photographers that I worked with and as an art director and creative director – learning from some of the greatest designers about composition and color. I brought so much into this studio that it – my advertising career – really was this unbelievable boot camp to prepare me for this, which I never knew at the time while I was in advertising.

Carl Olson: That's a good way to put it. It was a boot camp and it does show in your work because being in art direction, advertising, and illustration, you would have had to have an eye or develop an eye for composition and how to do the storytelling. It’s great that you were able to build on that. And like you said, so many of the other artists including many that I've talked to had a background in illustration and benefited from that greatly.

Kevin Kehoe: Yeah, definitely. I don't know why. I have a saying that I love, I eventually need to make a t-shirt that just says, “make your own luck.” And I believe in that: make your own luck.

You know, I just thought if I give it my all, the one thing I can control is how hard I work and how much I put into it. There are a lot of other things I can't control such as whether galleries will like my work or not, or collectors, or just people in general. Some of the things that we've talked about in this conversation that has happened for me, that's trusting in the journey. I can't make those things happen. I can just work as hard as I can and be disciplined about the work that I'm doing.

You know, I was never interested in doing one-off paintings, like just being all over the place. I had a real plan for what I was painting and why. So, it helped. To me the biggest thing – and maybe this is the best thing to end on – I just never wanted it to get to a point in my life – I was 50 ­– I never wanted to ask, “what if?” I never wanted to get to a point in my life where I had to wonder if I had started painting, I wonder what would have happened or what could have happened. I wanted the answer more than anything. And so, it kind of haunted me and became my ultimate strategy was to answer the question, “What if?” And at least so far eight and a half years in, I have a pretty good answer. It's not the full answer, but I love it.

Carl Olson: You’ve come a long way in eight years. And you still have got a long way to go. Why you may even be on one of Elon Musk’s Mars ships and get to paint on Mars!

Kevin Kehoe: Thanks for that vote of confidence!

Carl Olson: Why not aim high, right? Well, Kevin, it's been a real pleasure talking to you. There's so much more I could talk to you about, but I deeply appreciate you taking the time to talk with me and sharing your journey. “Trust the journey.” I like that phrase. It's quite beautiful. Thank you so much for joining me on the Artful Painter today.

Kevin Kehoe: Thank you. I'm honored. And, again, this is one of the extraordinary things that has happened to me and for me – you inviting me to do this. Thank you so much.

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© Carl Olson, Jr. 2021