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About Kevin, William Theophilus Brown & Paul Wonner

A close friend of William Theophilus Brown and Paul Wonner for more than 30 years, Brown’s portrait of Kevin is in the permanent collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

HIGHLIGHTS

• William Theophilus Brown’s painting of Kevin is in the permanent collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art
• Still Life with Flowers and a Note to KMK (1992) has a letter in the lower right hand corner written to Kevin (KMK/Kevin M. Kearney)
• William Theophilus “Bill” Brown gifted Kevin the painting Backward Glance (1989) in the Breaking The Rules exhibit, which has a relationship to Kevin’s industrial series in the 1970s
• Kevin Kearney knew William Theophilus “Bill” Brown and Paul Wonner from 1975 until they died
• Kevin owns eight paintings and nine drawings from Theophilus “Bill” Brown and Paul Wonner
• Kevin shared studio space with Theophilus “Bill” Brown and Paul Wonner for more than 20 years and like many artists their influences can be seen in each other’s work

KEVIN ON WILLIAM THEOPHILUS BROWN AND PAUL WONNER:

[On his close relationship with Bill and Paul]

“Most of the people that I met from that time are dead. So I mean, I’m probably one of the last people that had a really close relationship with Bill and Paul,” said Kevin. “They didn’t have any kids, and we were pretty close for a long time. They really considered me a son.”

“The exhibit was comprehensive. It was beautiful. And the strength of both their works together was terrific, and seeing their works together was one of those bittersweet moments” Kevin explained. “I think if they could have seen that, I think that would have really made them happy.”

[On how the Breaking The Rules show has brought Brown and Wonner recognition]

“Bill and Paul felt overshadowed by many of the artists of their milieu. And of course, keeping in mind that by any standard they were at the top of the art world, right. But they felt overshadowed by Wayne Thiebaud and others.”

“And this Breaking The Rules show was probably one of the greatest shows I’ve ever seen. It was comprehensive. It was beautiful. The strength of both their works together was terrific. Seeing their works together was one of those bittersweet moments that made me think if they could have seen that, I think that would have really made them happy.”

“I mean, I’m very familiar with their work for almost 40 years, and I was totally blown away by the Breaking The Rules show. By how consistent it was. And a lot of the earlier works, you know, from the 60s I had never seen except occasionally, right? You’d see one in a show or something. Some of the paintings are just strikingly beautiful.”

[On meeting Bill Brown, and the Balthus story]

“I met Bill 1975. So I was 23, I was in graduate school at UC Davis. I was a classically trained painter from back east, and I’d gotten into graduate school. I was studying with Wayne Thiebaud while I was his assistant for the first month I was there at UC Davis.

Wayne told me this wonderful story about a painter Balthus, whom I really admired. Balthus was one of my favorite painters, and no one knew anything about him at the time. So Wayne told this story about how a friend of his had gone to Paris in late 40s and had taken a box of Francs and bought a terrific picture from Balthus for a friend of his in New York. The guy then spent two or three hours waiting for Balthus, he met with Balthus, and Balthus talked to him.

At the end of their meeting, a little girl came in and sat on Balthus’s lap. And if you know anything about Balthus, he was sort of suspected of, liking little girls. So Wayne told this great story. Then Wayne he suggested that I leave him and join Bill Brown and Paul Wonner for a while.

I walked up to Bill, and I said ‘Hi I’m Kevin Kearney. I’m a painter from Baltimore.’ And Bill said, ‘I’m homosexual from Moline, Illinois.’ I told this story at Bill’s funeral, and everyone who knew Bill’s sense of humor laughed out loud.

So, I invited Bill to my studio on the campus after meeting, and I had a few paintings I had started. I was very nervous, and I got stoned until Bill comes. And you know I had my old paint-splattered sofa, and my paintings were up. And he looked at my paintings, and he started to talk. And Bill said, ‘Well, who were you influenced by?’ And I said, Hopper, de Chirico, Balthus. Bill goes, ‘My God, we’ve got the same taste in painters!’

I being a brash young Irishman said, ‘Oh my god, I have the greatest story in the world about Balthus.’ Bill sat down. I told the story for 20 minutes. I mean, I embellished it. I had every word down. He sat there the whole time and never said a word, and he just smiled. When I got done, then he walked up to me. And he put his arm around me, and he said, ‘My God, it’s as if you were there with me!’

So for years after that, I would go to art openings in San Francisco, and he would begin to tell the Balthus story. And he would look to me and go, ‘Why don’t you take it from here?’”

[On the beginnings of the Bay Area Figurative Movement]

“Bill Brown moved away from New York, because he knew, you know, he felt like he was in everybody’s shadow. I mean, he hung out with Stravinsky. He was friends with Elaine and Bill De Kooning. Bill was young, gay, and he moved out here and went to Berkeley. He ended up getting a studio on Shattuck Avenue, and Paul was in one. Richard Diebenkorn was in the one next door. Elmer Bischoff was in another, and three other guys.

And they became the Bay Area Figurative movement, because someone came to interview them because they were doing action painting but with figures. They were returning to figurative painting. So Abstract Expressionism but with figures, right. Bill told me someone came to interview Richard Diebenkorn. Diebenkorn got sick of talking to the interviewer, and so he knocks on Bill Brown’s door and told the interviewer, why don’t you go talk to Bill for a while?

Well the interviewer fell in love with a series of paintings Bill did on football players. And he got a spread Life magazine. And that was sort of how the Bay Area Figurative Movement got itself put on the map, so to speak.”

[On Paul’s painting with the note to KMK (Kevin M. Kearney)]

“And one painting is in the show that gets a lot of press is the painting of six feet by six feet entitled Still Life with Flowers and a Note to KMK (1992). It’s got a letter in the lower right hand corner written to me, I’m the KMK (Kevin M. Kearney).

The contents of the note written to me is actually displayed next to the painting in the exhibit, and it’s a note from Paul to me saying something like, and I’m paraphrasing here: ‘Kevin, I tried to put one of your paintings in this postcard as a reference to our friendship. But the image was too strong.’

I’d had a show in 1988 called Broken Dreams, and that painting was on display in the show. So he tried to put my painting into his giant painting, but the image was too powerful — even though it was only like a four by five inch postcard size, and the painting was six by six feet.

Paul said even though he wanted to include my painting in his painting as a kind of tribute, the image of my painting overwhelmed the rest of his painting. So instead he wrote the note, and put the note in his painting. He also included me in the title of the painting referencing me by my initials, which are KMK.”

[On Bill’s industrial paintings and relationship to Kevin’s paintings of buildings]

“The paintings of Bill’s, and I have I have at least two or three, two are in the show. These industrial paintings were started in the ‘80s when Bill got a studio in my building.

My place was on Illinois Street in San Francisco’s Dogpatch neighborhood, which I found after a friend introduced me to an artist named John Battenberg, and he brought me into that studio space. That’s where my studio had been for years before Bill and Paul joined me there, and I had done a number of industrial paintings going back to 1973. That Bill ended up doing a really great series of pictures of industrial buildings in the 1980s like I created in the 1970s.

So Bill painted those industrial paintings from the neighborhood where we worked together at the studio on Illinois Street at 24th and in San Francisco. The most famous of which may be Backward Glance from 1989, which is in the Breaking The Rules exhibit.

I could probably identify the exact locations where he painted those industrial paintings from, if I were to walk around the San Francisco waterfront area near the studio. But Bill also may have been influenced by the paintings I had done back in 1970s, including Two Streets in Baltimore, which is why I believe he gave me some of those industrial-themed works like Backward Glance.”

[On Kevin’s own collection of works by Paul & Bill]

“I have eight or nine portraits Bill did of me, one of which is in the permanent collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. And then a couple other drawings of Bills. I have two major paintings of Paul Wonner’s. All in all, I own 17 pieces by Paul and Bill.”

[On the portraits of Kevin by Bill Brown]

“He did a series of drawings from 1976 till 1980 of me, and we would trade. I did three, two or three portraits of him, and we would treat the drawings. Before he passed away, he gave me the whole series of drawings he had done of me.”

 

VIDEO OF BILL BROWN AND KEVIN:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9TKkfIFZ5E

 

CONTACT KEVIN KEARNEY

Kevin is excited to be involved with the Breaking The Rules exhibition and to speak about his treasured friendship with William Theophilus “Bill” Brown and Paul Wonner. To schedule an interview or follow up questions with Kevin, please click here.