16th August 2017
Kevin Low is an artist living and working in Glasgow, his new exhibition Women & Men is currently on show at the Union Gallery in Edinburgh.
What drives your passion – when did you know that art is what you wanted to do?
It’s an obsession. It’s something I have to do, or I get sick. I hesitate to say that because I think that’s how most artists feel. I don’t have a choice. That makes it sound like it’s a chore, like being bullied by the subconscious, but nah, it’s a bloody thrill, every time. There is nothing better in the world than creating stuff.
As a kid, I grew up on a farm. I expected to become a cattleman, I really did. It was a very small world. I think it was pop music that gave me that first buzz in my gut, that invitation to step away from the ‘real world’. Mr David Bowie, I owe you a lot.
What do you make and what are the ideas behind it?
I paint, I’m a recent convert to oils. I’ve always seen them in the past as frightening, uncontrollable things. I now see them as magical, something with the right degree of shove and pull can speak to people.
This Exhibition, ‘Women & Men’, has been created after a couple of years away from showing work. I think they call it ‘a period of experimentation and reappraisal’. I was becoming frustrated. Wasn’t getting that thing in the pit of my stomach. I took time to think, to experiment.
I’m a figurative artist. I painted a lot, and a burned a lot of stuff. In the end, I decided really to return to the basics, a figure and a room, take the props away, everything but flesh, and maybe a bed. My digital work had become more and more Rococo, every leaf a flourish, every branch a blossom. I loved it, but I wanted more. This all sounds like I’m describing some kind of relationship rocky patch. I love you but...
To read the whole interview, visit the Art Scotland website