By
Elizabeth Kohler
The opening reception will be held on Sunday, June 6, from 2 to 6 p.m. There will be entertainment provided by the Coal Mountain Ramblers an unplugged, improvisational acoustic roots band. Yum It Up! will be providing refreshments for the reception.
Included in the display will be a series of paintings that Kevin Kutz was able to accomplish within the past year through a grant he received. In 2009, Kutz was awarded a grant from the Eben Demarest Fund. The Eben Demarest Fund donates money to artists who have pursued the craft but never really emerged into the "big time art scene."
Thanks to the the gifting of the grant, Kutz was able to follow his life long dream of traveling to paint. Inspired by the works of Thomas Cole, the founder of the Hudson River School, Kutz took the opportunity to explore the evolution, context, and time element of the sites that Cole had painted almost 150 years ago.
Kutz began his travels by visiting an extension of the Connecticut River in Northampton, Massachusetts known as the Oxbow, the site of Cole's 1863 painting "The Oxbow." Kutz was curious to see if the landscape appeared the way Cole had portrayed it. Kutz also visited the site of Cole's studio and home at the farm of Cedar Grove in Catskill, N.Y., to study the sites of Cole's work.
Some of the sites Kutz visited included the Catskill Mountains, Hudson River and South Lake in New York. He was awarded Best in Show for his acrylic painting "Scene on Catskill Creek 1" in the 79th Annual Cumberland Valley Artist Exhibition. This painting will be on display at the Washington County Museum of Fine Art in Hagerstown, Md.
Kutz also has paintings of local scenes including Dunnings Creek, Route 30 and Bedford. He enjoys painting places that he visits and packs his supplies to take along on every trip. "A painting is just paint on canvas," said Kutz. "It's the colors and composition that make it." Kutz said his paintings are usually full of accidental marks and often times he finds himself asking "what would happen if?"
During one his trips to Cole's site, Kutz left a painting sit up over night. It had rained and was actually carried away and he found it downstream covered in leaves and mud and left a leaf attached to add to the effect.
