Kevin Ford: Contemplating the Commonplace presents recent handmade paper-based works by Kevin Ford created in collaboration with Dieu Donné. Ford’s work in paper draws from his studio practice, translating his established airbrush painting technique into the medium of hand papermaking. His work centers on familiar, everyday objects, such as a vase, hand, dog, or flowers. He begins with abstracted shapes and colors, intuitively responding to the ways in which the colors interact and reveal forms to him.

In Dieu Donné’s wet studio, Ford enjoyed the lack of an exacting control over the papermaking process, working at times on tabletop easels that allowed for unintended drips and color mixtures as he painted in paper pulp. The final paper works maintain the softness and indistinctness in form of his paintings, but offer a new tactile and visual experience. Ford explains:

“I address one of image-making’s primordial subjects, that of exploring the experience of perception. With an economical combination of loose brushwork and pigment application, objects bleed into one another, mimicking the visual slippage of internal images.

Here, each piece is devoted to a single motif and the sequence of images gives the impression of a picture book, with recurring depictions of flowers, jugs, and seagulls, or of an inventory of a sensory universe in an attempt to apprehend the world.”

Kevin Ford received his BFA in Painting from Boston University and his MFA in Painting and Printmaking from Yale. His work has been included in solo exhibitions at 12.26, Dallas, TX; Semiose Galerie, Paris, FR; Kate Werble Gallery, New York, NY; and at Tops Gallery, Memphis, TN. Kevin's work has been exhibited in group exhibitions at The Center for Maine Contemporary Art, ME; Inman Gallery, TX; Reyes Finn, MI; Essex Flowers, NY; Marquee Projects, NY; Casey Kaplan, NY; The Islip Art Museum, NY; Tops Gallery, TN; and elsewhere. His work has been featured in V Magazine, included in the book Artists II, published by Steidl, and has been reviewed in Artforum, The New York Times, and other publications.