The artist in Kenneth Evans was awakened by a summer storm in 1947 when "a great clap of thunder rumbled over my grandfather's New Jersey farm." The electricity went out, but Evans' inner light went on. He was just under three years old and thunderstruck by the palpable power of the natural world. Ever since that early eureka, Evans has been in the act of studying tangible phenomena and their intangible sources.
His multifaceted career stretches from musician and poet, to engineer and attorney. He is now Of Counsel to the law firm he established in Bethel, Connecticut. While practicing he handled many entertainment related matters and worked with numerous artist clients. He objects to being called a "renaissance man," but jokes that "millennium person" would do nicely, especially since he can see the period we are now in around the time of the millennium becoming a greater and more positive period for mankind than the renaissance ever was.
Throughout Evans' remarkable journey, he unwaveringly nurtured his powers as an artist. "Creativity has been a constant passion throughout my life," says the artist. In the mid-1980s, that passion led him to study with the distinguished Russian landscape painter, Kiril Doron, and later with Christopher Blossom, John Stobart, Joseph McGurl, and Donald Demers, all highly regarded contemporary marine artists.
Born on the coast of Stamford, Connecticut, Evans' early forays into the visual arts were charcoal drawings of ships and the sea. "Growing up on the coast gave me an appreciation for sailing and the sea, as well as for boating, swimming and all that is part of a shore area upbringing," observes Evans. At Stamford's famous Luder's Boatyard he saw many of the 12s being built and was fortunate enough to see Weatherly and Gretel docked there with Columbia up in the shed just after Weatherly's 1962 victory. Stamford's proximity to New York City afforded a teenage Evans the opportunity to explore thoroughly and study the City's abundant art world. This experience further plunged him into years of reading and study of art history, particularly of the marine painters.
In love with the stately wooden ships of the past, Evans re-examines historical maritime structures and environs through a perception shaped by the present, and he honors the past by bringing his notion of nautical nobility to the canvas. "But that is not the end of it," says Evans. "My paintings are a means for me to express feelings and emotions that are not always possible for me to put into words, not even poetical words. For me, painting is communication beyond reason, beyond common understanding. It could possibly be the highest form of communication."
Among the canon of marine artists, Evans acknowledges influence from 19th century artists, Fitz Henry Lane and J.M.W. Turner, and from 20th century artist, Montague Dawson. These influences may be observed in Evans' oft romanticized, albeit precise, renditions of ships, and also in his concentration on the variability of light, his smooth gradation of color, and his deliberation of the sky as intense as his attention to the scene on and near the sea. The sky might appear as a canopy of mountainous white clouds, a pink sunset at the horizon beneath the blue calm of approaching twilight, the last fiery flashes of a rapidly disappearing sun at the end of the day, or the grays of an encroaching storm. In the habit of Turner, color sometimes washes over all, uniting ship, water, earth and sky.
The artist is nationally known, has sold internationally as well, and has had one person exhibitions or been featured yearly since 1996. These shows have been in Newport, RI; Nantucket, MA; Sandy Hook, CT; Wellfleet, MA; Dennis, MA; and in the latest American Society of Marine Artists exhibition held at the Cape Museum of Fine Arts entitled "Masters of the Sea." He is a member of the American Society of Marine Artists, The International Guild of Realism, and an elected member of the Mystic Art Association, where he received honors in 2001. He has had pieces exhibited at the Cape Cod Museum of Fine Arts in 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004 and 2006, and his paintings are in numerous private, business and corporate collections.
He is represented in some of the better fine art galleries around the country. Among them are: Winstanley-Roark Fine Arts - Dennis, MA. (on Cape Cod), Plympton Fine Art - Plympton, MA.; Sheldon Fine Art - Newport, RI, (on Bowen's Warf); Trade Winds Gallery - Mystic, Ct; Sheldon Fine Art - Naples, Florida; Ship Shapes Maritime Gallery - Charleston, South Carolina; and Meridian Galleries - Greenwich, CT; and Nantucket, MA.
