Kevin Lopez was born in Houston, Texas in 1987. Always quiet and reserved, he grew up in a large extended family, in a completely uninteresting suburb, and always saw himself as a bit of an outsider.
In school, he found comfort in drawing and painting and went on to graduate with a BFA in Art from the University of Houston in 2011. He then worked as a graphic designer for some time but because of Covid-19 and the cultural and social environment of the world during 2020, he decided to pursue fine art.
His feelings of isolation during his formative years, as well as during mass isolation in 2020, informs his current work and has influenced his choice to explore ideas of identity and solipsism as it pertains to identity through portraits and depictions of the mundane.
Kevin has shown work at Lawndale Art Center and Fort Bend Museum. He has work in the Carolyn Farb collection and is represented by Catapult Gallery.
Artist Statement
I am a painter and digital artist based in Houston, Texas. I use the human figure and inanimate objects as vehicles to explore themes of identity and Solipsism as well as the notion that we can never truly know one another. Friends, strangers, personal belongings, and mundane objects all help me to explore the idea that our experiences are necessarily private and unknowable to others.
My work is mostly realistic in order to identify with the viewer while using minor surreal elements to subvert expectations of what a realistic portrait is and what it conveys. I also place my subjects in compositions stripped away of most settings so as to place focus on the gazes of the figures and to ask what meaning there is behind the mundane. I use digital photography and photo manipulation to create my source images that I then use to create my final pieces in oils, charcoal, graphite, and digital paintings.
