"Jim Sajovic", Oil on Canvas.
Eric Swangstu
Works on Paper & Canvas
11 a.m.-1 p.m.
(Special holiday hours)
Leedy-Voulkos Art Center
2012 Baltimore
Kansas City, MO
816.474.1919
Hours: 11 a.m.-5 p.m., Wednesday-Saturday
Runs through: Aug. 29.
Gallery site: http://www.leedy-voulkos.com
Talk about thoughtful guests: Eric Swangstu provided the confetti for his own homecoming show.
Okay, so that’s not exactly true. There were no bright bits of paper littering the Main Room Gallery floor last night, during Swangstu’s opening reception at the Leedy-Voulkos Art Center.
The celebratory color is in Swangstu’s painting themselves – brilliant flecks of pigment, speckling his portraits and still life pieces alike. Whether dancing around a heavy sphere, flowing out of someone’s mouth or supporting a plaster orthodontic mold, their occupation of open space gives Swangstu’s work an almost three-dimensional quality.
Confetti or no, Swangstu’s paintings are worth celebrating. The Kansas City Art Institute graduate, now Associate Director of Admission at Seattle’s Cornish College of the Arts, has come back to KC with a strong show. His pieces might grab a viewer’s attention with their colorful additions, but they hold it well after that touch is no longer a novelty.
His portraits — for example, that of artist and KCAI professor Jim Sajovic, pictured above — are both formal and entirely candid. There’s no false flattery in them, only genuine regard for the real people Swangstu depicts.
The flecks of color aren’t the only things giving heft to Swangstu’s portraits. His deft, confident use of light, shadow, line and color makes his paintings — while tinged at the edges with both Impressionism and Expressionism — far more lifelike than many works by photorealists.
It’s unusual for galleries to be open on major holidays, but in this case it suits. Not only is this Swangstu’s homecoming show, but there’s a family gathering of sorts going on at the Leedy-Voulkos … even when no one is there. Swangstu’s sister Holly is the gallery director and has several pieces of fabric art on display there. The Leedy-Voulkos also represents brother Troy, who is also a painter.
Of course, this being the Fourth of July, families all over will be gathering for cookouts, maybe a pickup softball game or two, and an evening of fireworks.
You don’t have to wait until nightfall to catch bursts of color, though. They’re right there, in every frame, accenting the power and grace of Swangstu’s paintings.
