Kevin Deadmond is an artist of many forms working in a variety of media across artistic disciplines…

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Kevin grew up in a small country house in Southern Illinois until about 7th grade, and then moved into the small town of Altamont, where he lived with his family until attending college for art at SIUE. He now lives with his wife and two boys in a farm house near Neoga, IL, where he maintains an art practice in addition to working as a stage lighting director for a local performance center.

“I have been drawing since I can remember. I think I always enjoyed drawing and coloring, and used to draw knights and dragons and superheroes, etc. as a boy. I even remember my older brother and I trying to make our own Batman comic when we were in grade school. Living in the country definitely fostered a strong imagination. Then as I grew up I always continued creating and being drawn to many forms of creativity including poetry, music and songwriting, creative writing, and the theatrical arts.

The type, or style, of art I typically do came about during college. I used to do a lot of realistic charcoal drawings, which you can work and work and get really obsessive about. So I decided to force myself out of my comfort zone and do something with ink (because it’s more permanent, and once it’s on the page, there’s not a whole lot of going back), and also something a little looser, hence the drips, pools, and splatters. I also have always been interested in figure work, because people are just interesting to study (they can express so much feeling with subtle body language), and particularly figure work with a lot of movement. So I decided to try to marry the detailed, realistic part of what I was doing in my charcoal work, with a more fluid and abstract approach with the inks and paints. I also utilize lots of bright colors that are not realistic for figure work to try to make my subjects feel more like an “any person” rather than a specific person, in order to bring my audience more into the feelings and movement of the piece.”

I find inspiration in lots of things. I really love nature, although it doesn’t show up in a ton of my work. Being outside tends to help me have a clear head, and gives me energy to think creatively. I draw a lot of direct inspiration from people moving with feeling, so things like dance, play, live music, even sports. I got really into going to contemporary dance performances when I was in college, and that’s always been a big creative influence for me. Something about the music, the movement, and the feelings that can be expressed without words is just very beautiful to me.

I think art is immensely important to society because being creative is the thing that makes us human. I used to tell people that I was teaching that I believe creativity and imagination are our superpowers as human beings. It doesn’t always have to be in the form of a painting, or a song, or a dance, but literally everything that exists because of humans started as an idea in someone’s head, and then they used the things around them to make it real. Art is just a very distilled version of what we are all doing with life. We are shaping and forming our reality to make something we imagined out of it, and hopefully that something is good, and beautiful, and helpful to other people in some way, even if it’s just to make them stop and feel for a second.”