Cover Artist: Kevin Andrew

By Gina Malone

After Kevin Andrew obtained an undergraduate degree in Civil Engineering and a master’s in Structural Engineering, he found a dream job designing skyscrapers in Chicago. “I quickly realized I hated it,” he says. “I had never questioned my purpose or existence. I was on the path of school, career, retire, die and call it a life. There is nothing wrong with that path, but it just was not for me.”

With the warning his father had given him years before about choosing an artistic path resounding in his head, he then began working in IT consulting for a corporation in Charlotte. His father had voiced the opinion that embracing the art that he loved during his school years would lead to a life lived in the basement of the family home. So Andrew, once again, chose the “right” path.

An opportunity to display his artwork at a gallery in a hair salon, however, gave him an inkling of how life as an artist might actually be. Although he had low expectations before the opening reception, family came and strangers showed up as well. “I sold most of the work,” Andrew says. “This salon/gallery gave me a space to be empowered to do my thing, and it forever changed my life.”

He quit corporate work and, in 2015, started Advent Coworking, a coworking space. “We focused on helping our members grow and connect,” he says. “We grew from 4,700 square feet to 30,000 square feet and had more than 400 members over the course of six and a half years. We had multiple event rooms, a podcast studio, a curated gallery, huge work spaces and offices, a library and partnerships all over Charlotte.”

After selling the business to a competitor and spending some time soul searching, he moved to Asheville with the intent, at last, of embracing art full-time. “The concept of having a working studio space that was open to the public blew my mind,” he says. As suggested by Julia Cameron’s creativity guidebook, The Artist’s Way, he spoke aloud his intention of becoming a full-time artist. “Two weeks later I was able to get a working studio/gallery space in a coveted building in the River Arts District from an obscure connection and it began,” he says. “Day 1 was very strange, doing what I loved full-time.”

As with his previous enterprise, he treats creating art as a business. “However, it’s a balance of not letting business and making money completely destroy my creative process and freedom,” he says. “I have since moved to a bigger, ground-level studio/gallery with storefront glass with my name on the window. I have not reached my monthly revenue goals yet, but it’s been less than three years, and I’m on track to get there.”

Andrew paints with acrylics and markers, applying and moving color on the canvas with all manner of implements including palette knives, cold-wax scrapers, large squeegees and toothbrushes. He starts each painting with a plan—colors, layers, meaning, title. “My paintings never go how I planned them,” he says. “The ones that do, I’m not usually that happy with.” Often, when he’s just about ready to paint over what he has done so far, there’s a breakthrough. “Out of nowhere, one stroke, one scrap of a color that I’m worried about, completely makes the painting,” he says. “It just clicks. I cannot explain it. Even the meaning has changed for me because I heard a song which got me down a very different thought process. It still related to my original intention of creation, but took it much further and darker than I originally wanted to go.”

Into his creations go a variety of ideas that relate to and are expressions of his life and what he sees around him. “Just looking into the forest is inspiration for hundreds of paintings,” he says. “Family, world events, ethics, politics, equitable conversations, self-growth, self-reflection, appreciation, are just a few of the topics I explore.”

Graffiti, the Art Nouveau movement and abstract expressionist artists of the early to mid-20th century are among the influential styles for him. “My latest work infusing big, bold outlined Art Nouveau flowers with graffiti and a healthy amount of abstract negative space is blowing my mind,” he says. “I love it, and it’s coming from deep within or, hopefully, from the universe.” He adds, “Creating is an emotional roller coaster with an unknown ending most of the time. The feeling of doubt, remorse and fear I have when I’m painting always leads to a new step in my creative journey, and I have learned to embrace the chaos of creation.”

Art, the life path that once seemed not “right” in comparison with traditional careers, has become entangled with Andrew’s life purpose in ways he still seeks to discover. “My art is an expression of my life,” he says. “I need it. I don’t think I could stop painting tomorrow, for the rest of my life, and be okay mentally or physically.”

Liz Taggart commissioned a painting by Andrew and says that he is someone to watch. “As an artist, Kevin’s inner drive and creative inspirations find dynamic expression in his approach to the elements of painting—space, directions, colors, paints and brushwork, geometry and relationships on the canvas,” she says. “Each is thoughtfully layered into compelling compositions of tension and balance, and his signature style of unresolved abstraction,” she says. “The energizing brushwork is deliberate. The movement on the canvas is compelling, and his use of color, oftentimes inspired. Kevin has that ‘fire in his belly’ that a collector wants to find in an artist and his work breathes that passion.”

Kevin Andrew Gallery + Studio is located at 109 Roberts Street, in Asheville’s River Arts District. Hours are Tuesday through Sunday, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Learn more at KevinAndrew.art, and follow on Instagram, Facebook and TikTok.