Kevin Paulsen’s Desirable Workbook

I have a massive crush on the work of American artist Kevin Paulsen. He’s perhaps best known for his murals and decors for early American houses. But while Paulsen’s schemes reference and honour the work of the naive journeymen painters associated with the period, they simultaneously remain true to his contemporary vision, evidencing the post-modernist’s disposition toward playful reinvention.

It’s a rarity for an artist to be able to pull off this sleight-of-hand, in which the past and present come together in ways unexpected yet plausible. In lesser hands such work would be constrained and rendered staid by the historic requirements, but in Paulsen’s, the results are invigorated by his talent for conjuring the past, while remaining uniquely and creatively himself.

I’ve been taken by a series of recent sketches from one of his workbooks. As far as I can tell they’re rendered in black marker-pens, with colour rubbed in with dry pastel and tonal accents worked in pencil. The workbook has gridded pages, and I don’t know whether the artist favours the ‘marked’ paper because it subverts any sense of the precious, therefore enabling him to work more freely, or because it makes drawings easier to scale-up at a later stage, should they be needed for large paintings or murals. For me the paper adds another layer of interest, with its rigid geometries cutting through the artist’s imaginary landscapes.

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The first drawings are squarish in format, and have a rather sentimental, antebellum tone to them. Here, ruined neo-classical architecture is counterpointed with weeping-willow and poplar trees, against a shimmering sun-scape.

And below, the European Grand Tour is conjured in an erupting volcano, its fiery discharge reflected in the water. These could be stills from a Lotte Reiniger film, or I could see them being snipped as lacy black papercuts laid against foil backgrounds.

The fisherman is a motif that the artist repeatedly returns to examine. He riffs energetically on diverse themes. One day it may be elaborate, tented pavilions with bunting, the next, masted ships in formal, dance-like  arrangements, their rigging a-flutter with flags. Paulsen loves pennants and flags.

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I recognise what’s going on in the images, as I plunder the past myself. First I make the observed studies to get into the zone, and then comes the flow and invention. Paulsen does the same. These meanderings through romantic landscapes are engaging enough, though they feel as though the artist is just flexing and stretching in preparation for a sprint. They’re the equivalent of what a dancer does at the barre!

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And quite suddenly, he’s away. The frame compresses into a wide landscape format. The mark-making becomes swift, the drawing angular and the perspective foreshortens as elements distort and pile up through the compositions. Swagged from above with elaborate drapes, the drawings take on the feel of scenes for toy theatres, or ballet sequences from The Red Shoes. The architectural elements shift, bend and reconfigure. They’re halfway to being something you know, yet remain slippery, easily sidestepping categorisation. I’m reminded of the book decorations of the British neo-romantic artist and illustrator John Craxton. He’d have loved the riot of shapes that form a crazed proscenium arch to this image.

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Back to neo-classicism again, but with subversion. Is the stovepipe-hatted man affectionately cradling his beloved, or is he a killer about to dispose of his prey by dumping her in the sea?

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Paulsen has the knack of making landscapes that I want to walk around. I skirt the church with tiled roof, take a cliff-path to the acropolis and admire the long-shadowed poplars marching across the horizon. The outsized column with a toy-town urn is weirdly space-age in appearance, like London’s Post-Office Tower, with its revolving restaurant perched at the top. And there, like a pelmet above a window, the swags of a stage-curtain, be-tasselled with berries, reminding us that everything is artifice, a gorgeous film-flam of painted canvas and limelight.

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The theatricality prevails as actors on a stage perform, with us the audience witnessing the play. In the distance what in any known culture would be a bridge, its parapets clustered with houses and shops, here has become a promontory/pier leading to nowhere. It’s mad, and inventive and delightful, and I love it.

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Here two men have a tryst…

… and here, lovers clasp hands, while behind a pillar a man pisses.

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There are compliments aplenty I could lavish on these. Suffice to say that I wish that I had made them. They are shot through with delights. There’s delight in their invention, their execution, and in their promise of adventure. I could write a story for them, and it would be full of exotic locations, unfathomable mysteries, confusing plot devices and heart-lurching melodrama, peopled with identical twins that deceive, duplicitous lawyers, love-letter-carrying duennas and barrel-chested heroes in stove-pipe hats. I’ve already told Kevin that I’m thinking of getting on a plane to the States to stalk him and steal them. He thinks I’m joking!

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All photographs by Kevin Paulsen.

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