Review

A profile of Kansas City artist, David Gant, and his comprehensive portrait project

David Gant working on a portrait of sculptor Larry Beuchel, a long-time lecturer and instructor at the Kansas City Art Institute. Photo: Todd Weiner, courtesy of the gallery

David Gant has been fascinated with faces his whole life.

“Ever since I first held a crayon, I’ve been drawing faces,” he says. “I think they are where you find, at least for some people, affirmation. You can gauge yourself by other people’s faces. A lot of communication happens through people’s faces that doesn’t happen with their mouths. You can find out a lot about yourself.”

Gant’s current exhibition, Portraits of the Crossroads, is a testament of this.* He’s covered the walls of the Leedy-Voulkos Art Center with portraits he’s made of people in Kansas City, some famous, others not so. He got the idea for an all-portrait show a few years ago, but he didn’t begin in earnest until January of this year, when a friend asked him to paint his picture. Since then, he had been painting as many as five portraits a day to prepare for the June opening, and in a couple of cases he even painted two canvases at the same time, one with the right hand and one with the left.

The canvases are quite large, and the Leedy-Voulkos Art Center is a big space, so Gant had to scramble get all the supplies he needed. He got donations from friends, for example, and his girlfriend scored a recycle-bin full of paints, about $5,000's worth. “I’m still squeezing paint out of those tubes, man,” he says.

David Gant, installation view of "Portraits of the Crossroads," at the Leedy-Voulkos Art Center through August 29, 2010. Photo: Holly Swangstu, courtesy of the gallery

Most of Gant’s subjects posed in his Crossroads studio to be painted live.

“When I painted them I made them face the painting itself,” Gant says, “so they could watch their own faces come to maturity on the canvas.” To do this, he looked at his subjects through a mirror, and so he had to paint the opposite of what he was seeing.

For some of his subjects, sitting for Gant was therapeutic. “Some would tell me stories about what was going on in their lives,” Gant says. “Some were shocked to see something of their parents come out in the images of themselves. It brought out feelings in them.”

David Gant, "Morgan Voelker." Photo: Holly Swangstu, courtesy of the gallery

It brought out feelings in Gant, too.

“When I was watching them watch my painting, I was looking to see how they were judging the painting, whether they were judging it harshly or if they liked it,” he explains. “It put me on the spot. I had to learn to force my way through it. And I found myself making more confident choices.”

He also started experimenting more. There’s one in particular work that he’s fond of, a close-up self-portrait with a pattern of vertical streaks across it. “I painted that one with my left hand using an 8-foot cardboard tube that I found in an alley next to a used condom and a broken 40 (-ounce bottle),” he says. “There was just a point in the middle of the project where I had to break it up.”

David Gant, "Self Portrait." Photo: Holly Swangstu, courtesy of the gallery

Similarly, there was usually a point in the middle of each session with his subjects where he knew he had to shift or stop or go further with his painting, depending on what the faces — the real faces, in the mirror — were telling him.

“There would always be a time when you sensed the person was getting restless,” he explains. “But I was more often waiting for that moment when you would get that nod or look of affirmation.”

Note:

* Portraits of the Crossroads is showing at the Leedy-Voulkos Art Center June 4 through August 28, 2010.

-re-

Popularity: 8% [?]

Updating...