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Austin360 blogs > Austin Arts: Seeing Things > Archives > 2009 > March > 07
Saturday, March 7, 2009
Texas Biennial honors a Lone Star art maverick
Few have influenced as many Texas artists as Kelly Fearing has.
The 91-year-old Fearing is the ultimate do-it-yourself artist: an independent creative, a dedicated teacher and an artist who defied the artistic expectations of his generation and certainly his regional Texas home far from the world’s arts center of the mid-20th century.
So it’s fitting that the indie artist-run Texas Biennial which opened this weekend, is honoring Fearing for lifetime achievement.
Several of Fearing’s paintings are included in the Texas Biennial’s two group exhibitions at Women and Their Work (1710 Lavaca St.) and the Mexican American Cultural Center (600 River St.).
Sunday, Texas Biennial curator Michael Duncan will present a slide lecture on Fearing and also host a re-creation of the artist’s 1976 creative abstract slide show to the music of C.P.E. Bach. And always one for a creative good time, Fearing will be there.
The ‘Texas Biennial Tribute To Kelly Fearing’ is at 2 p.m. Sunday at the Mexican American Cultural Center, 600 River St. Free. www.texasbiennial.com
During his prolific career, Fearing has been referred to as a Romantic surrealist and a spiritual naturalist. He was one of the core members of a group that became known as the Fort Worth Circle in the 1940s and who were instrumental in introducing modernist ideas to Texas art. Fearing and his colleagues were some of the first artists in the state to respond to the bold notions of Picasso, Miró and Modigliani. “We were considered way out at the time,” Fearing said in an interview several years ago. “But we were just doing what we liked.”
In the early 1950s, Fearing landed at the University of Texas’ then-nascent art program where he stayed for four decades. Under his guidance, generations of young artists were encouraged to think and create independently, to imagine worlds far beyond Texas. Fearing also expanded art opportunities for school children, developing one of the country’s first university-based studio art programs for high school and junior high school students.
Fearing himself continued to develop his signature style: stark compositions with crisp focus added to the spirituality of his symbolic tableaux. He combined vibrant color with meticulously rendered figures in natural landscapes: poets, saints and historical visionaries took up poses in rocky natural settings reminiscent of the Texas Hill Country.
Photos: Kelly Fearing in 2003, AA-S photo (top). “Spirit Deer at a Yellow Edge,” 1970, Oil on linen. Courtesy Texas Biennial (bottom).
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