“What it means to be an artist is that you have to create it and you have to share it. You have to engage with the community in order to add to its richness. That’s very important and not an easy thing to do because art is so personal.”
Ojai has long been known as fertile ground for the arts. When the “Mama of Dada” artist Beatrice Wood settled in the town in the late 40’s, she inspired many artists, writers and other creatives to follow.
For Kevin Robert Winger, Ojai was an inspirational place to grow up. Born in 1977, Winger was the middle child of a plumber and a bus driver. His mother, who would later come out to the family as Lesbian, encouraged his own creativity by enrolling him into painting classes. For many years, he studied under Sharon Butler exploring traditional, representative painting using brushes.
Understanding that he liked boys at a very young age, he came out to his mother at 12 years old. By the time he made it to high school, he was attempting to reconcile his spirituality with his sexuality. Depression and suicidal thoughts persuaded him to seek advice from a teacher and a preacher, who he feels to this day saved his life.
Publicly coming out in high school was not an easy transition. At the time, there were no support systems for queer youth. Winger was brutally assaulted by a fellow classmate and was hospitalized. It created such a stir that it was covered by the Los Angeles Times giving Winger more attention than he wished for.
“It turned out to have a positive result. Along with my best friend who came out as Bisexual, I helped to found a Gay-Straight Alliance at the school. This led to years of advocacy, establishing numerous Alliances in other County schools, lobbying for Anti-Bullying laws and LGBT activism across the state,” said Winger, who has received state proclamations from the California House and Senate and a GCBAPA (Gold Coast Business and Professional Alliance) Tri-Counties Excellence Award for his work in community service.
While painting took a back seat, Winger’s creativity did not. He found a fascination for photography and music. He played lead guitar and wrote songs for the folkrock band Rain on You, which found moderate success touring the West Coast.
“In my late twenties, I was in school studying environmental science and I decided to take a painting class. I had some old paints at home and a palette knife. No brushes. So I used the tools I had on hand and I really liked what happened. My professor liked my work so much that he placed two of them in an exhibition at San Diego Mesa College. They were priced at what I thought were ridiculous prices at the time, but both sold to professors at the college. That summer, I decided to change my major to Fine Arts.”
As he was about to graduate with Associates of Arts in 2010, he had the opportunity to open up a small gallery in Liberty Station. For a decade, he was able to establish himself as an emerging artist and gallery owner.
Working only using thick oil paint and palette knifes, Winger takes a sculptural approach to painting. The application is so heavy that it can take up to a year for the paint to dry. He expresses philosophical ideas through a number of abstract series that visually imply florals (Floraform Series), landscapes (Chromascapes series) and geometric shapes (Untitled).
Thirty artworks make up his Assortment series which reveals basic forms floating above a textural grid. While the concept appears visually simple, this series is a meditation on the choices we make in our lives to better ourselves.
“My art is informed by identity within and outside of the gay community. It can be seen as a puzzle. By recognizing the positive and negative, I’m seeking to reveal balance. I want people to see my work and think about finding their own balance by seeing through the noise of modern technology, temptation and the experience of living openly in our world. The works almost act like a form of therapy through composition, form, scale of shapes and color choices.”
“Even through my process of creating art, I am mindful of each mark I make on the surface of the painting. Every mark changes its relationship to all of the other marks. This mirrors what I am trying to express through my art. In life, every decision and action we take reshapes our engagement with the world around us.”
His previous series Intersect was similar to Assortment but the forms were not floating above the grid. Instead, they were woven into the grid like a tapestry. The series, which is almost entirely sold out, had to do with the conflict in our lives as expressed through shape and color.
As Winger looks to the future, he is currently completing a Bachelor’s in Art History from Lindenwood University. He plans to follow that up with a Masters in the Arts and Humanities side of Depth Psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute. He sees his education as a way to enrich himself and build upon the conceptual components of his artwork.
“I enjoy the evolution of my art practice. I hope that my art can shine a light on what brings us together as well as teach us how to treat each other with more compassion.”
Kevin Winger lives with Bart Smoot, his husband of 15 years in San Diego while creating and selling his artwork out of his studio at The Studio Door. Winger can be found online at kevinwinger.com and on social media Facebook @Mod.Est.Gallery and IG @krwinger.
Patric Stillman is a visual artist and gallery owner of The Studio Door. If you are an artist in San Diego’s LGBTQ+ community and would like to be featured in an artist profile, please contact Patric for consideration at [email protected].
