artist statement Jeff Waring 2017
The act of creating is a search for communion, on a small and humble scale, with the unknowable. My explorations range from misty watercolor washes and pours, to encrusted, gritty collage and assemblage, to graphic and linear compositions. My process is often initiated with something physical from my surroundings, maybe a sprinkling of pine needles to pivot within a flow of paint, or chunks of earth captured on the edges of drying acrylics, or relics of the situation under foot. Even a paint stain or spill can serve as inspiration. When I paint I like to start many pieces at once, and revisit them as a group, deciding what should stay put as is, and what needs further exploration. As one piece gains clarity, others might feel less resolved, and so a constant relational weighing takes place. It is a dance of elements, a process of weighing and seeking, adding and subtracting. Each work is a journey, or at least an excuse to wander. At times the path is clear, at times it meanders, at times I lose my bearings. Often I find myself circling back, looking for signs and directions, and taking time to pause and be present. All of my art is both lost and found.
artist statement Peter Kinney 2016
My art is a search for the spirit, rather than the letter, of the land; an inner essence of me and the earth intertwined. It may celebrate discovery of materials, a location, flights of imagination, wildlife, personal myth, and more. I love wild and remote areas, such as the Canyonlands of Utah. I collect interesting earths and muds and objects during my travels and use them as a basis for my Earth Paintings. I also use grasses, twigs, feathers, bones and shells within my work, and to manipulate my materials. I am inspired by what I see in the landscape, but also by what play, accident, and my imagination can suggest, and conjure, as I work, including humor and symbol. Though I am buried in the mud, I look upward; I love the clouds, and I continually throw water on my eyes.
About Peter Kinney
Peter Kinney studied art history at New York University, with studies in Italy, earning a Ph.D. in 1974. As he was completing his degree, he shifted his interest and focus from art history to creative art, and independently explored drawing, painting, ceramics, and glass blowing as he taught at U. Arts and Moore College of Art in the early 1970s. He began teaching art at the high school level at Haverford School in 1974, where he worked for 3 decades. Kinney was involved in the first Philadelphia Artists Cooperative exhibit in 1988, where the name Highwire was established due to the hanging of art from criss crossed wires within the old synagogue on Bainbridge St. He was an integral member of Highwire throughout its duration, which ended in 2013. “Mudman” Kinney began using the earth itself as a painting medium in 1997. He collected interesting and colorful earth while he traveled, from New Jersey and Pennsylvania, and moving outward to Maine, Black Mountain NC, and the southwest, especially Utah. Peter Kinney passed away in September of 2017, while traveling in Maine.
About Jeff Waring
Jeff Waring was born in Fall River, Massachusetts in 1963, and attended Rhode Island School of Design, graduating with a BFA in Painting in 1985. Upon graduation he traveled the US as a Domino’s Pizza sign painter, traveling cross-country while painting logos in new stores. Living out of a van, he developed small, collage paintings as a journal of place and time. This embedding of remnants and relics from travels continues to be a focus. Upon moving to Philadelphia in 1986, Waring married Jenny Quickel, began teaching at Haverford School with mentor Peter Kinney, and became active in the Highwire Artists Cooperative. In 1991 he began teaching at Westtown School and in 1997 moved to Media, Pa., where he continues to live and create. Waring draws inspiration from natural processes, earth cultures, improvisational music, outsider art and children’s art.