John Mac Kah
Realist painting is about engaging with landscape, about creating context for our experience. It is to some degree a celebration of those places that survive in a wild state, at the edge just beyond the periphery of vision. I want to bring Nature back into focus, pay it deep attention, and ask the viewer to become more aware that we are losing so much, so fast. The skill is to translate these powerful visual moments with these very real and earthy materials — pigment, oil, canvas, wood, and hair — and create a link between artist, audience and Nature.
John Mac Kah is graduate of Ringling College of Art & Design and a native of Florida. His interest in drawing began when he was very young and he studied independently with professional artists as early as high school.
Landscapes and wildlife are Kah’s primary subject matter, though he also has an interest in sculpture, still life, trompe l’oeil painting, and the rendering of prehistoric flora and fauna. He works mostly in oils, but occasionally explores gouache, watercolor, and acrylics. His painting has been described as twentieth century naturalism.
Kah been teaching since 1984. He currently instructs landscape and still-life classes at the Fine Arts League of the Carolinas, a school of classical realism. Since 1996, he has taught from his studio in the River Arts District, Asheville, N.C. His work can found in private and public collections in California, New York, London and throughout the southeast.