Creators, Makers, and Doers: Pat Kilby
Posted on 10/28/15 by Arts & History
Canadian born, self-proclaimed flatlander and Idaho-residing artist, Pat Kilby is heavily influenced by the profound environment which he is surrounded by. The Northwest and its realm of natural beauty and opportunities to creatively and personally expand have shaped how Kilby views his paint and the artwork that he chooses to create with them. From mountains and riverscapes to garages and Boise rooftops, he notices the minute details that spark his inspiration for his bold, and color dense oil painting tendencies. His goal is to capture the beauty that makes Idaho uniquely Idaho.
What is your preferred medium?
My preferred medium is oil painting on canvas. I also do some work on wood as well.
Why are you drawn to painting?
It is a very physical medium. By that I mean that oil painting is like pushing around butter. You can move it and get a heavy gash or a thin stroke. It has a physical texture to it that I like to manipulate. I think I tend towards work that has physicality to it.
I love the color element. I love the bright colors. I love to draw and I can draw, but one of the limitations of drawing in graphite, is that it is in black and white. You can’t get the intensity of color that you can get in paint. I can’t think of many other mediums that give you the same level of vivid color that you get in oil paint.
What does your working process look like?
The vast majority of things that I paint are land and cityscapes. They are environments in which I interact. I will get interested in a particular type of environment. A lot of my paintings have structures in an environment, usually an outdoor environment.
Most recently I have been doing this series of camping paintings. They are places that I have been to in Idaho and the Pacific Northwest. They are areas that I am inspired by. I grew up a flatlander around the Great Lakes, so I am forever mesmerized by Idaho and the environment around us. I hope to never take that for granted because that is one of the things that I recognize about people who have lived here their whole lives. It is easy for them to look around and think that alpine lakes and high mountain desert, riverscapes, and rock formations are the norm. They are not the norm for ninety percent of North America. I am inspired by those places and that is where I draw my starting point from. How do I capture that and introduce it to more people and how can I turn what is all around us, things that go overlooked, into something that is extraordinary and something to take notice of. I get my ideas from my physical environment. Much of what I paint is within a hundred miles of where we are now.
As far as process, I will start with a color wash on the canvas and then come back to it in four consecutive passes of different values. I start with adding my drawing, then I add my darks and then move up a level to dark mediums, then light mediums, and then a highlight pass at the very end with all of the detail. That is where most of the color and accents come through. That is a high level of my approach to painting.
Do you make sketches for your paintings?
Yes, I absolutely do. I find that is the best way for me to look at light and dark patterns. I was a printmaker before I was a painter, so I love heavy outline like you would see in a linocut or a woodcut print. Those elements come through in my oil painting. I either draw from photographs or on site and then I have to struggle with finding a good composition or something interesting. I do a drawing and then try to reduce the drawing to a black and white pattern so I can see the light and dark composition and how those forms flow. The biggest thing for me is to know what to leave out too. I rarely capture something as it exists in front of me. I make selective decisions about what I want to highlight, what I might move in the composition, and what to leave out. Once my drawing reflects this and I am satisfied then I transfer that to canvas. If I don’t like the drawing on canvas I have to start over. If I don’t like the composition in the drawing stage then no amount of painting is going to improve upon it.
Can you elaborate a little more on your current work?
I did a show in March for which I started a series of paintings that were based on a compilation of camping trips around Idaho and the Pacific Northwest. I have continued that work since the show ended. I am interested in structures in the natural environment. I like the idea of dwellings or where we spend our time. I have done a lot of houses and a lot of tree forts, tents, and improvised structures. I like that idea of where we spend our indoor time and how we interact with the outdoors. I am working on a painting right now that continues along that camping theme. I am on a kick that way. I have been hiking more, going into the Sawtooth Mountains and taking a lot of pictures and getting ideas for more work.
Do you draw any specific inspiration from other artists?
I am Canadian born, and there is a heavy influence from a Canadian group of painters called the Group of Seven. They started in the area where I grew up, in Toronto and Northern Ontario. Their goal as a group was to go out and capture Canadiana in paint. When I moved to Idaho I felt like there was a limited number of artists here and there was still an opportunity here to go out and capture some of the elements that are uniquely Idahoan. I want to represent that in paint. I think our geography is unlike that of the rest of the region. It is not like Washington, it is not like Oregon, it is not like Montana, it is uniquely our own and that is something that I want to capture and be a part of.
What does your creative schedule look like?
For me, creating is about making work and it is about the discipline of doing the work. I am a part time artist. I have a day job and I have two young kids. I try to get into my studio for three or four hours, one night a week. Then I try to get out to the studio after I get the kids to bed, from around nine to eleven, as many times as I can. I have to balance that with working in the morning and not being too tired. When I am preparing for a show I am usually in the studio ten to twelve hours a week and when I am not I am probably working closer to four to six hours a week. It depends. I go through bursts of output and slower times. I would love to spend more time, but I have to face the reality of what I can afford to put into it now with what’s going on in my life. I wish I had more time, but that’s the reality.
Where does your drive to make art come from?
If I weren’t creating something, then I wouldn’t be me. I am not sure what else I would do. There is nothing like painting. When I get started I have a hard time stopping. I lose myself in the work and the process. It is very meditative for me to translate life into paint. It is as much an act of relaxation as it is of expression. I sometimes wonder that if I were a fulltime artist producing forty plus hours a week, that it might take some of the enjoyment out of it. I feel like I am fortunate that I get to balance the creative outlet with other work that is very different.
What’s important to me about being an artist is that you are a part of the conversation and a part of the artistic community in Boise. We are geographically separate from a lot of metropolitan centers in the country and everything that we have to do is from the ground up. I am honored and driven to be a part of very active arts community that values my contribution to it no matter how small. It is not every community that welcomes artists the way that Boise does. It is also not every community that wants you to be successful and connected with one another and offer something that somebody might find value in.
Do you recognize any resources that are lacking for artists to thrive?
It might be tough for younger or new artists to know where to start. The city provides a good outlet by providing opportunities, but the galleries that are here in town tend to represent more full time established artists. We don’t have a particularly strong gallery scene, but I do feel like there is a lot of opportunity for artists. There are public art opportunities, opportunities to connect to other artists, writers, musicians in ways that I have never had exposure to anywhere else.
Who is your audience and how do you find them?
As it turns out, I have been paying attention to my audience and I found out that women like my work more than men and women between the ages of forty and sixty tend to be my primary buyers. I don’t know why. I do wonder about that. A lot of what I create, people will say it reminds them of a children’s book and there is something kind of innocent about that. Maybe that is the appeal. I don’t know. It is weird that almost eighty percent of the people who buy my work are women between forty and sixty. There was a guy a while ago that came to look at my work and he was clearly looking for something edgy and I am not edgy. I just don’t create edgy work. At the end he said my work was very comfortable. I was kind of devastated that my work was comfortable. He then left and I mulled over what he meant by comfortable. I then thought that it is true, my work is accessible and colorful and quirky and it is comfortable. That is okay. There are definitely artists out there doing way edgier work than I will ever do and they are great at it, but I guess my niche is comfortable. It took me a while to get to the point of accepting that, but it’s okay, I am contributing work and creating work and I am part of the Boise community in a way that I want to be a part of it and that is enough for me.
Why do you stay in Boise?
I love it here. I regularly say to myself, “Look where I get to live.” I was up at Redfish Lake last weekend and realized it is really my backyard. Obviously I am inspired by the natural landscape, but I also love the accessibility of this place and its quirk. I have never been more active in my life than I have here in Boise. I got into mountain biking, skiing, snowboarding, I became a runner here, and I feel like I have just barely scratched the surface. There is also this whole river life that I haven’t even explored as well as fishing, but I don’t have time for it all. What matters is the access to things that I am interested in and things that I want to do here is untouchable. I am not just saying this. I truly believe that I couldn’t do it anywhere else. I couldn’t afford to live in a home with a studio, work for a non-profit, and create art in my spare time. That is what I do. I feel very fortunate to have those options.
Creators, Makers, & Doers highlights the lives and work of Boise artists and creative individuals. Selected profiles focus on individuals whose work has been supported by the Boise City Dept. of Arts & History.