In the historic tradition of art, the gifted artist first learned to draw and then to paint … whether a portrait, landscape or religious subject.  Perhaps not the first, but we know the great Titian broke this mold and colored his canvases without bothering to draw.

And so it seems that today as it pertains to painting, an artist either has the knack for the realistic figural or the abstract expressionist and seldom does it reside in the same person.  But then I found British-born, US-based Kevin Geary.

Acclaimed as a portraitist with a huge gift of transposing the soul of his sitters onto paper (his work is in the permanent collection at the National Portrait Gallery, London) or as an abstract expressionist artist whose colorful canvases have an promising auction track record, Kevin is truly a modern chameleon of sorts.

While I admire his artistic talent and the amazing likeness in his drawing, it’s his abstract work that I find particularly marvelous.  The color-saturated paintings are happy, easy to live with, and have the right visual weight to hold a room together.

image credits: Kevin Geary