// Kris Lewis' piece "Scintillating Venuses" | Photo Credit: Kris Lewis
When Kris Lewis says “art is love made visible,” he doesn’t mean love for his subjects–-if he did, he’d have quite a harem because he is best known for his paintings of isolated female subjects with striking eyes and surreal surroundings. Like many of the New York School poets, Lewis believes that the creative process becomes visible upon completion of a work. That creative process, he explains, can happen only when the artist truly loves his craft.
“Your intentions don't necessarily have to be of a 'loving' nature,” he explains. “You can create art in any mood or mental state, but the love of 'creating' should be there if it's truly art you are making.”
Lewis, a twin and one of 7 children, mainly paints solitary female subjects. He believes that all humans have an intuitive understanding of each other’s bodies. By painting his subjects in isolation, he makes the subject and the viewer aware of each other, thereby creating what he explains as a “dialogue based on the many interactions I have with my subject as I begin to understand and create it.”
Because the painting is not a creation unto itself, but rather a culmination expressing a creative process, Lewis’ goal--to make the viewer “wonder what the subject is capable of”--is accomplished when the viewer actually becomes a part of the dialogue Lewis portrays through the painting process. His subjects’ eyes connect directly with a viewer with calm candor, drawing them into the painting to a degree unachievable and even unnerving to an unsuspecting viewer anticipating a casual art viewing.
// Kris Lewis' Untitled oil on wood piece | Photo Credit: Kris Lewis
“There is nothing we understand more in this complex world than the powerful but subtle expressions on our faces and the gestures of our hands,” Lewis says. “I like to use these elements to tell a story about a fictional person in a fictional environment that mirrors our world and its various struggles. I compose the image with just one figure mainly because I want the viewer to have that same connection I feel with the subject.”
Lewis’ paintings evoke a strong sense of solidarity despite their surreal characteristics. For example, “Intrepid Drift,” in which a woman floats on a boundless sea with only a solitary floral paddle to guide her emit a stolid aura of control and knowledge of their surroundings. This may be due in part to his Latvian heritage. “Art and music have played such a vital role in keeping…a grasp on their [Latvia’s] national pride,” he says, adding that his own Latvian mother showed him by example from a very early age “what hard work was" as he watched her take care of her children alone.
Now, through his paintings, Lewis depicts that strength and pride--and the iron backbone behind them--that lies beneath the surface of all humanity.
For more information on Kris Lewis and his art please visit http://www.krislewisart.com/
