About

Introduction BY David McKee, L’Ecole Horizontale, 2020

Kevin Teare arrived in New York City in the mid-1970s. I think it was the sculptor Jim Huntington, a fellow artist from Indiana, who recommended Kevin to do sheet-rock walls for our gallery in the Barbizon Hotel for Women. All artists knew how to build walls to survive and we soon liked the polite, charming newcomer in our midst. He said he was a painter, but that his first love was music, that he’s been the drummer in a band back home in Indianapolis. In the 60’s and 70’s, art and music seemed to go hand in hand and the decision to do one thing or the other confused many art students. However, everybody seemed to end up making the right choice. By the time New York beckoned, Kevin had already made his decision to become a painter. But the problem with painting is that you can never tell with certainty whether you’re hitting the right note. If you’re smart and lucky New York helps build the confidence to solve that problem.

The 70’s witnessed a leap in how collectors were drawn to younger painters. There was a generational change accelerated by the activity of dealers like Paula Cooper and Ivan Karp, whose success in opening up Soho attracted many new galleries and collectors. Even the elderly Castelli Gallery moved downtown to exploit the youthful energy. But eventually the ‘scene’, as it quickly became, slowly began to sow the seeds of its own decline as envy soured friendships and artists began to scramble for long term recognition. Career success became the ambition and much of the work began to suffer. If you were modest you were lost in the scramble for fame. One could hope there was room for everybody in the vast jungle of New York, and if the work justified being exhibited that would be enough. But we know that isn’t possible. Why? Well, that is why for most artists it all starts and ends as an unfulfilled, unlikely dream that never dies.

AWARDS

2007

Guild Hall 69th Annual Artists Members Show – High Honors (winner selected by Faye Hirsch, Senior Editor, Art In America)

2006 

Joan Mitchell Foundation – Painting Award

1978 

National Endowment for the Arts – Painting Fellowship

1975

Indianapolis Museum of Art – Catherine Mattison Award

EDUCATION

Newark Museum, Tibetan Painting, Phuntsok Dorje (2000)

Bard College, M.F.A. (1996)

Indiana University

Ball State University, Indiana

Private and corporate COLLECTIONS

Sidney Lewis, New York City

Hal Bromm, New York City

Marcia Tucker, New York City

Goldman Sachs, New York City

Ronny Cohen, New York City

Bob Crewe, Los Angeles

McDonalds Corp., Chicago and Dayton

Morgan Guaranty, New York City

Reed, Smith, Shaw & McClay, New York City

A.R.A., Philadelphia

Sam Shahid, East Hampton & New York City