Kent Knowles
*Cradle*, 2021
Acrylic on canvas
40 × 30 in
101.6 × 76.2 cm

Lee: Hi, this is Lee Matney of the Linda Matney gallery. Tonight, we're doing a zoom webinar with two artists in our latest exhibition The Task That Is The Toil. There are several artists associated with Georgia in the show—Athens, Georgia—who’ve moved on to Atlanta and, in the case in point, also Baltimore. Kent Knowles is a professor of art at Savannah College of Art and Design and he has been a student of Art Rosenbaum's, he's been with our gallery for nearly a decade. Teddy Johnson is a professor at Anne Arundel Community College in Maryland. He's also a student of Art Rosenbaum. He's been with our gallery for over a decade now. So, they have some very strong pieces in the show and their bodies of work over the years have been very compelling and interesting to our collectors. Without further ado, hello, everyone. And welcome to the webinar.

Kent: Thanks for doing this. Yeah. Thanks a lot, Lee, this is a pleasure. So, my name is Ken Knowles. I'm a professor of painting at Savannah College of Art and Design in Atlanta. And I'm very pleased to be here tonight and to have a wonderful and very healthy, continued relationship with Lee. Lee, I've really enjoy watching the gallery grow and change over the years. And it's always nice, especially with this last show to kind of get the green light, you know, to dig into the dark side, so to speak cause, you know, and, COVID/post-COVID days, I think the world has really been kind of challenged with a lot of a lot of things and I think preferences for imagery may have changed over the years too, and, and in response to it. So, I really love being part of this show. I'm going to show a couple of pieces that I have in the show. What I'd like to do is talk about my process and then I'm going to hand it over to Teddy and I think he's gonna do the same.

Kent Knowles
*Search Party*, 2021
Acrylic on canvas
36 × 36 in
91.4 × 91.4 cm

So, kind of what got this whole ball rolling, and, and I got to say, this is one of my favorite titles of any of any lecture I've seen, but the idea, you know of Rorschach and Pavlov walk into a bar, right? I think anytime you look at paintings, you have to consider the kind of unsettling thought that maybe the artist isn't always in control and that sometimes, certain things kick in with the creation of a work and you can call it instinct, you can call it experience, learned behavior, whatever you want to call it. But I think, I think, and I won't speak for Teddy, but sometimes I'll make it work and I won't quite know what it's about. And so sometimes a title will come up, so this one's called Search Party, and I still haven't quite out what this one's about yet. I think it has to do with the terrain that's kind of presenting itself. It looks like kind of a harsh terrain and you've got this figure in this environment. And then that mysterious number eight. I wish I could explain that to you. I have no idea what it means. I have a hunch it's gonna kind of present itself later, but currently, it may have something to do with my son, I don't know, he turned eight recently and there's something kind of magical about that age. But he's not blonde and he doesn't have long hair, so I don't know, but I'm really fond of this painting. It's a square.

And then another piece I have in there that that is even yet more mysterious. And when I saw the work that was in the show, especially the work of Art Rosenbaum, I noticed something very alarming in that he has a painting also Lee, remind me of the title of the one with the glove.

Lee: Self-Portrait in a Philippine Graveyard

Art Rosenbaum
*Self Portrait with Philippine Graveyard*, 2010
Oil on canvas
56 × 33 in
142.2 × 83.8 cm

Kent: Yes, and I would love to hear from Art to, you know, about those paintings, because I wonder if he's equally aware of the content, you know, with titles like that, I'm sure. I'm sure they're almost as interesting as the paintings themselves. But yeah, so I had this painting called Cradle and I was struck because there's a similar thing with gloves going there and, and you know, I'm a huge fan of Rosenbaum, I'm a student of his, I know Teddy is as well. We're all figurative painters. So how could we not, you know, kind of jive with Rosenbaum's vibe, but I still don't know why I gave her those gloves. And, so when I saw the two paintings, you know, close to one another, I was like, wow, what's going on there? You know? So, this painting, I have a little bit more of an idea about, but I, I tried to obscure the identity of the girl and you know, make it a little bit more about the process of kind of holding this thing. You have a human, you have an animal, this isn't a typical tamed kind of pet animal. This is something, you know, you would find in the wild. And so again, I don't quite know what it's about, but the backgrounds and the environments for both these paintings are very similar.

But when it comes to painting, I have kind of an interesting process. And I wanted to share that with you all today because it may be a little different than you expect. I consider myself a narrative painter, but I never start out with a specific idea or narrative in mind. In fact, the paintings, if I ever do any preliminary sketches, which I rarely do, but when I do even then the work changes dramatically. So, I like to show this one, this was for a set of commissions I did years ago, and they wanted trees and girls, and that was pretty much, you know, they gave me free range other than that. So, I did a bunch of preliminary sketches and I liked this composition a lot more than the one that I did. So that's what it turned into, but what was strange is, you know, the composition kind of went south in my opinion, because in the sketch I had all these lovely points of tension. You know, her hand was in the crooked that tree, her neck was cradled back. She was holding an unexposed root. The knee was kind of tangent to the stump. I mean, there's a lot of, like, it was almost like a five-pointed star. And when I finally painted it, some adjustments occurred and I'm really unhappy with this one because there's so much tension at the top, right? Like her hand is there, the ropes are all cinching up there. She's looking up that way. It's like everything, even the glare, you know, of the, of the sun coming through, it's all right up there. And so this one still haunts me and I remember trying to dig my way out of it. So, I tried, like, I tried to create tension way in the back there where the clouds and the hilltops are almost touching one another. I punched in a few leaves. And then if that didn't do it, I'm like, well, heck if I can't put a black and white dog in there, then I’m worthless, you know? So, I put that dog in there and I still don't think it's quite doing what I'd like it to do.

Lee: There’s a figure in the background too, is that a person in the background? It looks like that maybe it's a leaf from here. I can’t tell from the screen.

Kent: Sure. Yeah. And, you know, I was trying everything I could. The strange story about this. I've never been a dog owner until recently. And, and one day they, the girl, the girl and the boy and the wife brought home a Boston terrier and it even had that weird little swoosh on its neck. So, that always freaks me out when I see this painting. But I'll give you a glimpse into the process cause it's really about design and it's hardly ever about narrative. So, I've got three paintings to show the majority of which have been here in the Linda Matney Gallery.

So, this is kind of how it starts out. I'll just have a large canvas. I like to work large scale and there won't be a whole lot of preliminary drawing. I'll just start drawing with paint, I'll flip it around. I'll cover it up, I'll knock it down. And it's funny to see how throughout that search, you know, I don't know what's happening and then I'll find a little something like an anchor. So, in this case, it's that woman's hand. And I ended up building the painting around the hand, but if somebody said, “Hey, that, that decoy painting that you did of the girl is standing in the lake, like, you know, what, what research did you do?” And I'll just be like, I didn't do any research. Like I had no idea what that painting was going to be until it finished. And now when someone says, “Hey, what's the significance of the decoy?” I can't always tell them. You know, so it's, it's very much like a Rorschach test that I'm imposing on myself. I'm kind of putting images out there and then whatever I see kind of come into fruition, it's like, oh, okay, well, it's definitely that. But what gets interesting is when you paint anything with any level of certainty, like that is a scarf and that is a gun, you can do that all day long, but if you still don't know what it means at the end of the day, then that painting is still functioning for you just as it is for everyone else. And I find that terribly exciting.

Lee: And this, one of the previous painting, it has a quality of a photograph kind of that atmospheric quality of 120 film. It's very interesting. It's almost as if it's a photograph or you're feeling that it's photograph to me. I don't know how to describe it, but it's, it's interesting quality.

Kent: I appreciate that, Lee. This was one when I switched from oil to acrylic a few years back, you know, I was really excited cause I found that a lot of my brush work was very similar. Like I didn't feel like I had lost anything. And I'd heard other artists talk about, you know, transitioning media and, and it goes, you know, it's like a whole new thing and they don't know how to manipulate it, but for me, it really operates in a very similar way.

In this next piece, I thought I had it figured out in the beginning. I was like, oh yeah, I'm going to have a person standing in the snow looking for water because I thought how ironic, like, you know, this figure is surrounded by water and yet they're looking for it, you know, and all it requires really is a little bit of time and patience to see exactly, you know, to find exactly. That was my idea. But it was a compositional nightmare. I mean, you could divide this painting down the middle vertically and all the action’s happening on that one side and the other, I mean, the figures even turning away from that one kind of dead side, and that was just bothering me. So, I had switched up the sky, although I love that, that felt like a winter sky. I don't know what I was thinking, but I switched up the sky and then I thought, well, what if she's in this broken cold river, you know? And that got really interesting, but suddenly it was like, okay, well, that's too obvious cause she's still looking for water and she's in the middle of it. So, then I got rid of it completely changed the angle of it. And then of course it turned into this one breakup that was, that was at your gallery.

Kent Knowles
*Breakup*, 2016
Acrylic on canvas
72 × 72 × 1 in
182.9 × 182.9 × 2.5 cm

Lee: I just love the way you transition and you showed me one another one with water and the figure changed. It was a kind of a blonde, kind of classical woman. And it was this kind of fashion looking design clothing. So, I just, I love the treatment of the fabric and also the ice is just astonishing. The quality of that.

Kent: Well, thank you. And this, I think this comes from teaching too, because, and Teddy, you know, is a teacher as well. So, you're there in the classroom saying, oh, you should do this. And maybe you should consider more drawing and more line. And then you get home to the studio and you're like, you know what? I gotta practice what I'm preaching here. So that was one of the greatest benefits of teaching, I think is that you have to be accountable to your students just as they're accountable for grades and things. There's this wonderful kind of dialogue that kind of feeds both parties, I think. But when painting too, it's hard not to get caught up in those tropes that you love to do. Right? Like you you're like, oh yeah, that's how I'm going to do hair again. And this is how I'm going to do sky again. And that's that kind of learned behavior aspect of this discussion, right? It's like these things that, you know, it's like, oh, it's time to do that. Okay. I'm going to go do that now. And I think with painting, that can be the kiss of death. You hear teachers, people saying it all the time, but you always have to find a way to say, okay, I know how to do that. And I could do that again, but you know, the studio is going to go real stale without it.

Kent Knowles
*Doe*, 2016
Acrylic
60 × 48 × 1 in
152.4 × 121.9 × 2.5 cm

I'm gonna show you this last one, then I'm going to hand it over to Teddy. So, this one I thought I had figured out as well. And what I knew about this one is I wanted one of those puffy jackets, I saw them around. I was like, you know, that'd be a fun thing to paint. So, I had this kind of working narrative of a girl, like maybe an older woman waiting by the docks, you know, pulling in boats. I don't know. That was a giant ship behind her. I don't know if she'd be that strong. And I was like, yeah, I don't like the old lady. So, I gave her this kind of Betty Page haircut and that didn't work out. And then I put this weird kind of Chihuahua-deer in her lap. And then I changed her face again. But you know, the only thing that's really staying constant is that that jacket of course finally became a painting. And what I love about this and then seeing cradle is that this, this feels like the same scenario, but at different times.

Lee: So am I right that Cradle was unfinished and exhibited at our gallery unfinished.

Kent: Yes, yes, it was. And that show was, that was the best. So, I approached Lee. I said, “Hey, Lee, you know, what, if we did a show of work, that's in progress.” I know that sounds nuts, but I'd seen a show at the Met called Unfinished, I think is what it was called. And if you haven't seen that show, that is a game changer for any artist, you see the kind of work they did. And so again, you don't quite know where these paintings are going. Unlike Teddy Johnson, where he has everything figured out, you know, in advance. I'm just kidding, I'm going to hand it over to hand it over to you now, Teddy.

Teddy: It's a pleasure to get to be in this conversation with the two of you. I mean, I've gotten to know you all for a long time in different capacities, huge fan of the work that you show at the gallery, Lee. It's really exciting to be in this company, artists including Kent, who I've been a fan of your work since the first time I saw it in grad school, so really inspiring work.

Teddy Johnson
*Forest Edge II*, 2020
Oil on canvas
36 × 36 in
91.4 × 91.4 cm

So yeah, this is one of my two images in the show, right. One’s behind Lee and they ended up being kind of a set. I called them Forest Edge I and II. They really sort of followed kind of a crooked path. I think that, you know Kent's sort of digging into his own work, you know, kind of talks about how the work can lead you a little bit. Right. And I definitely find that to be part of my own experience. So two works that I've shown with Lee before that kind of led me to the works that are in the show are this one, this one it's called Deposition. And it's me really staring at and trying to figure out a Rosso Fiorentino painting and kind of deconstructing it and putting it back together.

Teddy Johnson
*The Deposition*, 2015
Oil on canvas
31 1/2 × 31 1/2 × 1 in
80 × 80 × 2.5 cm

Teddy Johnson
*Wash*, 2018
Oil on canvas
36 × 36 in
91.4 × 91.4 cm

And then I've got you know, quite a number of paintings with hands and arms in them at this point. Right, so I did a show with Lee called Abound. And this one was in that. So these, these paintings certainly started with that impulse. They started with that sort of interest in particular with the arms, you know, I was thinking about him on some level when I was working on this piece. But also, of course you know, the, the previous series of Abound. You know, I've got these sort of prompts, right. These things that kind of lead me into the process and then life's happening around me. These were finished during the pandemic. So you know, quite a quite a few different phases kind of happened.

Teddy Johnson
*Forest Edge I*, 2020
Oil on canvas
36 × 36 in
91.4 × 91.4 cm

And for me, the paintings really kind of they kind of wake up and emerge as I'm working on them. Partially through this painting, I decided that I need a fern, right. And it's a forest ferm, right. That's something that really strikes me. And in this case, I actually went out and bought a fern and put it in my studio and was using that as part of the painting. And then this atmosphere, you know started to emerge, right. This was the first of the two. And the thing that started to happen for me are these kind of questions of the unknown, the unknowable, are kind of things that were, I was thinking about. And, you know, that's kind of, you know, some big talk, but something that was just sort of stirring around in my mind, in relationship to the idea of a forest edge, right. So, this idea of being in this place between the light and the dark. This place where you're in sort of between the domestic and the wild. And then also, you know, this is pandemic times. This is you know the, the pendulum of life. And I'm thinking of relationships. And you know those relationships around me, that human interaction, what it means to connect with people. So, both of these pieces have that sort of stuff in the middle of them.

Now all that stuff that I just said are things that happened in my mind as I was sorta meditating through the process of making these paintings. I definitely see painting as sort of a meditative process where I start not necessarily knowing what it's about. But through the process, I'd certainly learn stuff about myself, not so different from, you know, some of the remarks that you made Kent.

Teddy Johnson
*Kindling / Tinder III*, 2019
Oil on canvas
30 × 40 in
76.2 × 101.6 cm

Now another set a new paintings that I've got also grew in a similar way. So this is a painting that I had a part of a series called Kindling. That was at the Linda Matney Gallery. Great opportunity to have that show with you, Lee. And here, you know, I've got this natural element, this kind of plant matter in this case, it's a fountain grass. And this was quite a convoluted process to how I got to this painting. So I'll just use it as a jumping off point. By the end of this painting, I was thinking of kindling. Or that idea of something that could catch fire. So here, you've got this element that could catch fire, and there was a metaphor in there that I was really interested in. Now, I was using flashlights and cardboard boxes and all these sorts of contraptions in my studio to have fun with this process. And I was doing some painting from life in here, believe it or not. But what was left for the process—because these are two that are brand new, you know, not shown yet—is the stripes right? The stripes were a big thing that was sort of left to the process.

Teddy Johnson, *Offering - Bee Balm*, Oil and Acrylic on Canvas 30X38

So here's another one. Yeah, that's brand new there. So I got into a start with color. Start with layering. And just sort of seeing what built up on the canvas. And that really dictated to me the gestures that I wanted to see it in these paintings and then also, you know that returned back to the plant matter. And I think that, whereas the previous ones felt more like about something about to ignite. These ones felt more about sort of trying to understand this idea of an offering or some sort of votive symbol that might stand in for a desire or, you know, sort of a prayer or that type of thing. So that's sort of the things that emerged in my mind, in the process, you know. There's some very idiosyncratic, small brush painting that happened at these. And, you know, in some ways I'm trying to capture a likeness, but in other ways you know, every day that I sit down, I'm kind of a new person, right. And every day that I sit down the feeling of the painting changes. So I kind of follow them until it speaks to something in the world for me. It's sort of where I take these two.

So that's the conclusion for me. Kent, you were talking about that idea of still wondering what they're about. Right. And so, and I'm always hesitant to nail them down. I'm always hesitant to kill them by sort of saying, they are exactly this. So they grow; they ask me questions about the world around me. And hopefully they, they engage with those sort of questions for others. So those are my process ones.

Teddy Johnson
*The World Outside*, 2021 (right)
Acrylic on panel
12 × 12 in
30.5 × 30.5 cm

So this is another spin on it, right. This is me starting you from a doodle. So this little cutoff image here is a doodle that just sort of just sort of happened. As an educator, I'm also sometimes in these three hour long zoom meetings and these meetings, I'm certainly engaged, but there's that sort of need to process that experience that you're having. So this drawing really grew out of that. And I've got a couple of those that this painting and the one after it grew out of. And these are again pretty new paintings. So, what exactly are they about, you know, Kent, I'm going to ask you a little bit later, but I'll talk about the process.

So one line right follows another line, it creates a motion. And that motion leads to a shape. And that shape gets balanced against something in the corner. And that shape reminds me of another shape. And, slowly a face emerges, a person emerges, emotion emerges. And then you say, is there something there? And when I ask myself when something was there is when the sketchbook had been kicking around my studio for a week. Right. And I said, I don't know, I want to keep going back and looking at it. So, you know, this was pretty different from the other two paintings that I just showed you that are finished around the same time. In fact, I was kind of working back and forth on them concurrently.

Teddy Johnson, *The Night Outside*, acrylic on panel 12X12in

Here, this is a small painting, about this big and my hands, and I've got this weird drawing. And I say, well, I want to do something with it. I've gotta change my process. Right. in order to even approach it. So this is on wood panel, where all the others are on canvas. This is entirely in acrylic, where the other ones are actually oil and acrylic. Right. So here, I've got this very kind of immediate medium to me. And by immediate, part of it's fast drying. That ability to actually have something to be able to be layered over pretty quickly.

Comment on the use of the red ground

Teddy: You know, the red ground has shown up in maybe five of my paintings over the last couple of years. So, it's something that I don't know, it's just sort of the nerdy knowledge of what might happen with the green was going on in my mind. But yeah, I started with this red ground, thinking of it in a very sort of abstract way. My son came into both of these. Now, my son wasn't in the, in the original. But certainly in the room next to me, when I'm painting these. So he's certainly found his way in.

But yeah, you know, I guess I'll look at here as my segue, my transition here, because for me, I'm in that Rorschach area. if we have time, I've got some other images I can use for the trained behavior. But as a segue, Kent, I think we were going to interpret something of one another's works So, what's going on here?

Kent: And it's kinda cool. I didn't find out until recently Teddy, that you had a son. I mean, that's how out of touch I am right now, I'm in the studio and working. And so I'm sorry about that. So this is clearly about the boy and you know, I see these moments of, you know, and maybe I'm projecting here. I think we should've said Rorschach, Freud, and Pavlov.

So right in the center, you have this shape and it's like a playful child's shape, maybe a dinosaur, you know, it's got that kind of feeling. It also starts to look like a very simplified kind of puzzle piece. So it looks like the language of children. And I find it intriguing that it's smack dab in the middle there because of course my eye goes directly to the boys, right. Especially the one in the foreground probably cause how well it's painted and you know, the articulated forms and that kind of semi-nervous playing that the kids are doing. It's really a lovely image, but my first interpretation was from the father's point of view, you know, what kind of world am I putting in front of my kid? You know, not necessarily the world, am I bringing them up in, but you know, what am I putting in front of them? What environment am I creating? And is it the right one? You know, that pressure, you know, a lot of people don't consider that when they think about parenthood of course it's a lifelong job. But creating a world that suddenly challenges the way you've done things, you know, we talk about learned behavior. It's enough to survive in this world, but suddenly you're raising a life form and you want everything to be magical. Right. Like I certainly do. So when I see these colors and, and these symbols, you know there's movement, there's kind of this implied kind of celestial wonder. And I think at the end of the day, it's really impossible to know what that little dude is thinking. You know, I mean, you can do your best, but this really seems like like the child kind of thinking about life and, and these kids entertaining these extremely heavy thoughts, and we try to protect them from that, you know, but I really, I think it's there.

I remember before I had kids and I would see people with their children and the kids would say something really crass or something, very politically opinionated. And I'd be like, ah, there's mom and dad coming through the kid. But now that I've had kids, I really truly believe in nature over nurture. I think, I think these little things are just born with these certain inclinations and these desires and it's kinda mind-numbing to think that you get the privilege of raising these little things. So this kind of feels like playful to me, but it also feels like the very heavy gravity of childhood and parenthood.

Teddy: That was a lot of fun, Kent. It was. That was great to great to hear you play around with it.

Lee: And in the Forest Edge series I almost see Karl Jung in those. This balance with nature being in balance, maybe a little bit of trepidation. I really that's something I was thinking about with those. It's a very pristine, beautiful, delicate balance and humanity. I'm seeing.

Kent: Yeah. And those other ones, Teddy, the most recent ones, I was thinking that seems like the partnership. Cause I've always thought about the stripe, a stripe can’t exist without its counter. Otherwise it's just a color, you know, but suddenly these two things come together and you get this vibration and there's like a balancing that has to happen between the two.

Teddy: Alright. Well, thanks so much for digging in there. That that was fun. It really was.

Kent: It really was, oh man. And by the way, I know I've got a doozy for you, Teddy, I ain't going to lie.

Teddy: I'm in the hot seat now.

Kent: Well, this one's an old one too, it's not recent. The reason I chose this one is I still don't know what it means and it's kinda freaks me out. It's kind of like, there's nights where you dream something and you’re where did that one come from? Usually I have a theory about dreams and it's kinda like the wastebasket on your desktop. You have all this stuff and you're like, ah, I don't think I really need that anymore. And so suddenly it goes into one spot and then you have this dream and you're like, why am I still thinking about that?

But you know, it was funny we're talking about Freud. I got this thing I do with my students and I don't know if it's a good thing or a bad thing, but sometimes they don't talk at all. And so I said, and I remember this from the grad school days. I don't know if it was Rosenbaum that told me this, or maybe it was Jim Herbert, but they were telling me one time, cause I was up for some kind of review, they were telling me how one brilliant grad student years ago assigned his committee members, specific archetypes, specific roles. And so they didn't have to be themselves. They could just play that character. He says the best critique he ever got, because they just globbed onto one of those things and just fired away.

So now I came up with about six and, and it's kind of fun. Some people don't like it, I let the students decide if they want to do it or not, but there's different roles. There's doctor obvious. So Dr. Obvious just says, what's there, like there are blue stripes, there's a plant, you know, and they got an easy job. Then there's the technician. And the technician has to decide or try to figure out, you know, what media went into it, how it was painted and constructed. You've got coach and coach says where things could be better. That's all the coach does, but among them you have Freud and everybody wants to be Freud because you get to interpret exactly what's going on, you know? And then there is the devil and the devil is just mean, the devil just picks on every little thing they can, and then we end with mama because mama just sings the praises and you know, it's beautiful and I love it. And we try to end with mama. Cause if you don't, it can get really weird. But I was thinking of that when I was talking, interpreting your work. AmdI don't think I invented it, but it's fun coming up with those archetypes, you know. All right. So there you go, Teddy.

Teddy: Oh man. I’m nervous.

Kent: I mean, I don't mean to hype it, but I still don't know what this one means. And this was in the gallery for a while. Do you want me to give the title?

Teddy: Let's take the title. Why not? Whatever you feel. Yeah.

Well, I'll just start by saying that the composition is gorgeous. And, you know, whatever person on your list that is I'll inhabit that person for a second. I really enjoy the kind of tension from the figure on the front towards the figure in the back. There's this little gap between them that gives you a little bit of breathing room and also gives room for the unsaid to really gain weight. So yeah, I have previously wondered what this figure in the distance is. The thing that I'm catching here today that I don't remember is the woman's reflection in the mirror. And that's probably the area of the painting that makes me squirm in my seat a little bit.

It’s that there's this thing across the room, that's heavy, that's in human form. So I don't know whether it's the children or whether it's a thing we're thinking or a thing that we did. Right. But, but I see this figure sorta being a symbol of, I don't want to say fear, but something a little foreboding maybe something that you treasure. So it's kinda got more than one thing for me. Like it's kind of adorable, but also, pretty scary. So, that’s a nice part about that figure to me is that it can have a little bit of childlike pleasantness to it, even as it feels like full Halloween mode back there in the distance. The type of thing that my son desperately worries he's gonna see when he goes outside next week. And why is that? Right? Because we can't see, we can't see the mouth. This is pre-COVID times. So what's going on? The only thing that we can see are those eyes and the only thing we can see on the other side is that it's almost like there's this double. We've got this woman, who, it's a self-check. Like what is that it, is that me, is this right? Am I kind of doing the right thing? And on the other side of the page, you’ve got this symbol of some sort of turmoil or some sort of an internal thing, that's my deep dive in the Freud. But I really also just really enjoy these pillows in the foreground. I love that they push out towards me. I get to kind of follow the stripes in and kind of rollercoaster over them. And they're kind of soft and inviting. I kind of want to sit on them. So, you know, sometimes I worry because I can get kind of dark in my own paintings, as I worry that if you put all the darkness out there, nobody wants to look at it. So I really appreciate here that you've given me a comfy pillow to sit on. I guess I kind of lean in and then say, oh my goodness, is that what happened?

Kent: Well, that was a good one. I appreciate it, Teddy. Yeah. Um, and it's weird. Cause you know, thinking back when, when that was painted and hearing your interpretation, it's like, oh yeah. You know, like it is what's going on. Oh man. I think we have probably the best job in the world. Cause we get to make things that are kind of mysterious to us, but then we also have the pleasure of seeing what other people create and you know with teaching, you don't really know the students that well. You kinda get to see their habits and what they can work on. But it's kinda cool to get a glimpse into this form of self-revelation. I just thank my stars every day that there is something out there like painting tjat we can invest in and, even better, that somebody you've never met can walk up into Lee’s gallery, experience this thing, and be moved by it.

Lee: The dark qualities are what many of the clients really resonate with. The danger, the fear, the intensity is something that's transmuted. They feel that om the paintings, and that's one reason they sometimes collect. So this works because they feel, really feel strongly and they feel, it changes for them to psychologically, depending on the mood and the day. Yeah. They've talked about some clients talk about your work. They say, have I come in on a certain day, this reminds me of this, but I come in another day, I feel a different way towards this, but it has this complexity, this richness and Teddy, as well as the richness with someday the, uh, uh, uh, painting. So we see, um, like a deposition I love deposition with,

Teddy: I love that that term is self-revelation. I think that is something that you really highlight at the gallery that you give a home for artworks that are exploratory and that can be incredibly personal and necessarily nailed down into a particular prescribed thing. I do think that that is, as Kent was saying, one of the treasures of, of teaching that you can foster that in somebody else. That you can say to go ahead and run with you. Right. So you're at capacity. In fact, if you're not running with who you, let's dig in and run with who you are a little bit more and that's sort of the special kind of mentoring thing that you can do with someone but then to be able to actually have a gallery that welcomes that, is a real treasure. To have a gallery that can say, all right, you have one that digging in, and come in and, show it to the world, that's a, that's a, a great gift you've given us.

Lee: I really feel like we're kind of a laboratory for those experiments and, and things that could be open-ended or, or interpreted much more than something that's just very solid and decorative.

Kent:if you're looking at popular culture too, the kind of shows that people are watching and what they're experiencing and choosing to experience. I think it's very telling on kind of where we are globally, like who saw squid game coming? Like I didn't, but, but it's like the sense of like, okay, you're down to it now. And you're like what do you want to do? And there's this, I think a lot of people have been experiencing that. I think that's why we have a lot of kind of employee shortages right now, because when people were taken out of their routine there, they had time to reflect and say, well, you know what, why am I doing that specifically? I could be doing something else. And so it's a, it's an exciting and a kind of a scary time right now, but to see that level of search and that embrace of the darkness coming out in artwork and popular culture, I mean, I think it's a, it's a great time to be a, a painter because cause it's happening inside and outside, you know,

Teddy:That's right.

Lee: Yeah. I really like seeing how the photography in the show is intersecting with paintings now and with similar themes . We have several photographs in the exhibit.

Teddy: There's so many synergies between the works, um, in the show Lee. And so, Michael Ross, we talked a little bit about how his painting right next to mine. There is this beautiful bird soaring through the sky and then below it you've got exiles. Right. So,here is a real kinship. I don't know a whole lot about the painting. but we have the exploration of the natural world right which is endlessly inspiring to me and then using, as an opportunity for metaphor for something that that's kind of probing. So to get, to be next to a work like that or next to an art Rosenbaum. art Rosenbaum is such an inspirational character and the glove in his painting is so fantastic. Lee, you did a great job on the show in terms of, at least from my perspective of, of doing all these little pairings around the room. So I hope people do get to check out the show if they haven't already.

Yes. Yes. We have about three weeks left. We have a closing reception on the 12th of November and we're walking, welcoming my new, a curatorial facilitator, Victoria, Aerosmith to the gallery. Uh, she's been with us for about a month now and doing a great job, uh, helping us with exhibitions and new exhibitions coming up. Um, the, you know, definitely see the show. Um, there's quite a bit of other Southern art miles. Cleveland Goodwin is another one from the south. Uh, we've got Scott Bellville, which I'm very happy to have again. And I feel their work resonates quite well with your, your works. Um, so anything that, does anyone have any questions?

Oh, I saw a question pop up in the Q and a section there. Did you guys see that this is a good one. It says picking up on what Kent mentioned about the mysterious connection with Art Rosenbaum's. I'm curious if either, or both of you have experienced in the process of manifesting things in your artwork, meaning have you painted something that then becomes part of your reality, a type of deja VU in a way, Teddy, do you want to do that one? I got a good one, but you go,

You can start on that. I gotta, I gotta think about that for a second. Yeah. If you've got one that jumps right up and go

Kent Knowles, *Import,* 2019, Acrylic on canvas, 60x72

Kent: Well, sure. So, um, and I kind of talked about this. I did a little blurb about it. I guess it was October of 2019. it was well in advance of the COVID crisis but I was doing this giant painting for a demo. It was like a demo day and I just, I had this painting and it was okay. It had like this girl red hair and her eyes were going in different places and it, it was kind of a mess and I was just sitting on it. I was like, oh, I don't know about this painting. And then, onne day I started painting it and I said, you know what, I'm gonna, I'm going to give her this mask.
And I actually painted a mask across the face and we see them everywhere now, but October of 2018 t was kind of a strange painting. And what's funny about it to me is because I love painting noses and lips, you know, like that's my jam, you know? So, to consciously kind of cover it up was kind of strange, it was a mystery to me, once again, I said, well, why am I doing that? But I really wanted to do it. And then I posted it, if you look at my Instagram page, KentKnowlesArt , you'll see it's way down in October from a few years ago. I still see that painting and I think, wow, that's kind of creepy that, you know, I mean, people had worn masks before, but not in the way that we see it now. So, so that's been one of those instances to answer that question. What about you Teddy ever, ever have anything,?

Teddy: Maybe not, not in the same way, but with the forest edge paintings that they were started before the pandemic and then the pandemic happened and they continue to emerge during that process. I will say that I like many folks, I was home with my son for good bit of the first eight months of the pandemic and we spent an incredible amount of time right after that painting was already started building a trail through the edge of the woods.

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