Kip Deeds – Kip Deeds: Art and Design

Cat Nip

Posted on February 10, 2025 by Kip Deeds

It is unfair that black cats are considered bad luck merely because they crossed a person’s path. This bias has has given me extra sympathy for black cats. As such I always wanted to make a drawing of a feline in ink the main focus of a picture. While a cat may go about its business unaware of this bias, an undeserved reputation is unfortunate for people because it is easy to malign character and often hard to defend. Overcoming innuendo requires a strength of self. The self awareness to accurately judge criticism is a skill developed over time as we are tested and learn from experience.

In a away, art is another kind of character exercise. When an artistic endeavor extends over a longer period, the scope of evaluation broadens as well as questions about nature of the work. A chain of additional considerations is built into the process. Elements are added or removed and the visual balance shifts the interconnected meaning of the parts. Each addition or adjustment is a new balance, opening questions about how to keep going, and when to stop. While there is self doubt (Is this any good?), there also must be joy.

As such, the cat, the artist, and the picture are in a state of play.

Cat Crossing

Different kinds of cats have crossed my path and have served as inspiration. Throughout my life printed ephemera has had made an impact. The artist may be unknown and the work may be impermanent, but this kind of art is a currency that keeps moving within culture. Finding it can be a surprise or even a treasure. The following is an example of such a find.

Cat Question

Catnip is the first thing that came to my mind when I thought of a title for this post. However, I realized I did not have a complete meaning. I knew it was a bit drug like for cats. In the case of the picture above, I do not have a title. After a first look at a picture, the viewer has ideas and a summary opinion quickly follows. However, ta title is succinct and formulated in a way that requires an additional step and invention. The New Yorker’s cartoon caption contest is attractive because of a distillation processes. I am looking and thinking about a title, but for now the cat has got my tongue.

If you have idea’s for a title, feel free to leave a comment.

The Village

Posted on April 21, 2024 by Kip Deeds

Distant from Winesburg, Ohio, but the same small animals scamper near the road that leads to bigger places. The village is divided by a road and met by a single shop. No description will lead to a full picture. However, an attempt means a worthy journey.

The shop yields potatoes that look like they felt the ground. For the the children or the cyclist is an ice cream or a treat. Outside are cats, dogs, a few keepers, and a few are unkept. The drinkers find their places slowly disappear. A half burned stump at the edge of a yard. An old wooden wagon in disarray.

The exercise park is uninhabited. Exercise is walking to the shop. On one side of the divide is a forest, on the other are expansive fields. There is a hotel for animals and a periodic chorus of barking. Bumps slow the cars. At half-time the divots get fixed on the polo field.

A leader encourages a line of dogs to march through the village. Everyone has a job, wild pigs and mosquitos alike. Persistently blood is given and taken. People and ponies come and go. The dogs watch the gate with the cat in its hiding place. There is one parrot in the village that whistles poetry telling the lonely to come home.

The village is close enough to the train that it can be heard. Over time the city has moved toward the village. This change has led to new houses. Where there were mostly farms, holiday houses were added, and later residential dwellings of different sizes, shapes, and styles.

Three extra pictures for the road.

Makeshift

Posted on December 2, 2023 by Kip Deeds

As I reflect on news that AI will be transformative, we come to understand that idiosyncrasy can be taught and the result of machines can become indistinguishable from human craft. However, before this technological advance, styles were already quickly absorbed and repurposed. Despite much replication, personal experience is individual and can not be replaced. The extra time to make/build and reflect yields a multitude of fruits (e.g. deeper thought, organization, or simply a surprise).

Above, I try to recreate the village where I currently live. The more I try, the more incorrect I become. Some aspects of the village are accurate but fundamentally I arrive at a new place. As details get added, uncertainty is replaced with a focus. Regardless of specificity, this remains but one perspective. A wonderous aspect about perspective is that eye level and insight lead to endless possibilities. There is no way to fully understand a complex place.

Just as our perspective can shift, with little effort change arrives on its own terms. For example, high speed internet came to the village. Not everyone purchase this service, but new fixtures were attached to many of the posts that carry electrical wires. In front of our house is such a post and a new fixture. Below was added a well placed stick. With the addition, I see a sculpture. I know the village has been changed. Likewise, the drawing needs updates.

The Long Run

Posted on August 10, 2023 by Kip Deeds

As I understand, the concept of synchronicity provides a meaningful explanation for how unconnected events can be joined to form a more significant union of meaning. This idea brings seemingly chance actions into a concert of relatable events. If small decisions have power to shape our path in remarkable ways, then it can feel as if spirits are at work. Similarly the creation of art can feel miraculous. When arranging visual elements that may not seem connected, often a transformation occurs revealing a greater story. The sum becomes bigger than the parts. When making the picture above, people, creatures of the sea and sky came together one by one. However, a vision of the whole is realized only as the page is filled.

Since I was a child, I have been fascinated with how a picture comes together. Though my knowledge was limited. I recognized that if commitment was given to an image something special could happen. The question always remained how and what to do next. In 2003, as an adult, I visited Belgium and the Netherlands and saw work by Rogier van der Weyden and Jan van Eyck and realized I would never meet the measure of their discipline. However, I also understood that I live in a different time an seek a different measure of success. While precision to paint with a single hair brush is not necessary, I continue to feel that spending time to develop a picture is important. It means that time is given to observe and be discerning enough to make decisions that transforms a whim into something more solid and imbedded with intent.

Rogier van der Weyden, *The Descent from the Cross* (c. 1435), oil on oak panel, 220 × 262 cm. Museo del Prado, Madrid

Big Pictures In the Modern World

As an art student I noticed that students, professors, and guest lecturers had a way of summing up art from a decade in a condensed way. For example art of the 1950’s might be described as formal abstraction, 1960’s pop art, 1970’s minimalism, 1980’s neo-expressionism. Although these are simplifications, one can feel the shift that occurs in a particular time. In the 1990’s I noticed the emergence of large scale photographs.

I was particularly awe struck by seeing photographs by Andreas Gursky. I remember a large photograph of a football field from above and noticed how one had a sense of the whole field but also could feel the presence of the grass on the field. Likewise, a landscape containing a river would reveal a fisherman on the bank of the river. Compared to the landscape, the the fisherman was small. However, because of the scale of the image, I could more closely identify with the figure and even imagine the fisherman being hungry. This was new and more powerful than anything I could see in a painting at that time. While it is impossible to reproduce the scale and detail on a small screen, an installation view allows for a relational sense of the photograph in a space.

From Here to There

In science, often with great work and time, one advancement leads to another. The idea of progression is engrained in much of what we do. However, its insertion into art can be problematic. Art runs parallel to technology barrowing from innovations (e.g. the development of new materials, colors, or mediums such as video and digital production). In this sense art may come to look new. However, if art is characterized by the act of making something, then the act is more repetitive than innovative. Despite the fact that a base process may remain the same, art becomes charged with meaning because it is bound to a context that includes history, environment, and cultural studies. Interest may wax and wane. Some art is lost or overshadowed and later resurfaces with renewed interest. An example would be the work of Janet Sobel whose paintings predate Jackson Pollock’s drip paintings but are strikingly similar. In this sense re-evaluation can make the past seem very much alive in the present. Art is a vehicle, vessel, or prompt to re-evaluate time and place.

Finish Line

I once trained for a 5k race. I did so because I never ran more than a mile. It was a worthwhile experience. I challenged myself to run greater distances and felt the accomplishment of reaching a goal. However, I stopped. I can not say when or why. Some endings can be abrupt, long, or gradual. However, as we stretch for something to achieve, ultimately the end arrives on its own terms. Circling back to the first image above, someone asked me if the central figure in the image was Jesus. I don’t think so, but he is stretching, there is a connection, and an ending.

Again and Again

Posted on March 12, 2023 by Kip Deeds

I previously wrote about creating the the image above. However, I felt that the picture could change in compelling ways. The blue and green colors set an evening atmosphere and I imagined the light and color changing. I also could see a time when the child is no longer the center of the landscape. First other colors were sampled. I was searching for an intuitive balance. The result is a composition with more elements contrasting and thus a busier looking image.

I created another version in with a similar blue and green palette. This time the center is more open. At first I wanted to leave the center ’empty’ (i.e. lacking figures, trees or other elements). However, the maximalist in me could not let this happen. Rather, I settled for a scene where not much is happening.

A fourth version was created in an attempt to focus colors on a day time color scheme.

By re-making the image several times surprises were found, comparisons were made, and reappraisals became possible. The transformations of this image were limited. Thus, re-exploring the image felt akin to going for walks in the same forest but at different times of the day, at different temperatures, or in different seasons. There are times when repetition is drudgery. However, usually there is an opening to see something new and it could come from a small change in procedure or perspective. The walk might be the same but the opportunity to reflect holds possibility. Paradigm shifting ideas are rare, whereas incremental adjustments are available and the results can reach further than expected.