Featured Prints Artist: Kevin Rolly



Location: Los Angeles, CA / Age: Unknown / Speciality: Photography & Oilgraphing / Contact: www.kevissimo.com


Kevin Rolly, also known as =kevissimo here on deviantART, is a traditional artist through and through with every breath he takes, with every emotion felt. Driven by the mother of all emotions, Love, he creates artworks of such depth that words cannot describe, with a unique emotional and physical passion. Recognized for its distinctive style, Kevin Rolly’s work has been seen in such magazines as ELLE, Mirabella, W, Detour, BRIDES, Dark's Art Parlour and many other publications throughout the world. His technique of “Oilgraphing” is an original process developed in 1994, which makes a seamless blend of traditional photography and oil mediums, with the occasional addition of bone and blood.





Welcome, Kevin. Please introduce yourself.

Hello. I'm Kevin Rolly. I'm a full time artist living in Los Angeles. My new studio is in the Brewery Art Complex in downtown. I drink way too much coffee, occasionally breath fire and have a horrible penchant for abusing the ellipse.

When did you become aware of your interest in art and the creation thereof?

I don't think I can remember a time when art wasn't part of my life. It was the magic in my childhood. I can remember the smell of linseed oil when my mother painted a picture for our bedroom. And then there were the museums and the art books. It was the door into a vast and fathomless, even supernatural world. Everything had this electric potential.

I think my journey into that world had been set very early on. It seemed inevitable. I truly felt to not be an artist would have been a fundamental betrayal of purpose. The knowledge of that was of course exhilarating and utterly terrifying.

"I truly felt to not be an artist would have been a fundamental betrayal of purpose."

When was the first time you picked up a camera and what did you shoot?

That's a great story. It really came down to the fact that I was in love with an older woman. I was ten and she was probably twelve (I just called my parents to confirm the date of that trip since my age has bounced between eight and ten in various interviews). She was so beautiful. Her name was Jackie and I was this ungainly weirdo. She had just stepped out of the ocean, wrapped in a towel and stood there lost in thought. It was this unguarded, vulnerable, deeply moving thing and I just felt utterly compelled. My father had just purchased a used Nikon F and I grabbed it without even thinking and came up to her. She then held the moment for me. That trust was the greatest gift anyone had given me and I can honestly say that it changed my life. In many ways I've been taking the same picture ever since. The image is in my gallery. Thank you, Jackie, wherever you are.

What equipment and techniques do you use for your photography?

I'm doing the vast majority of my shooting with my Mamiya 645 with the Nikon 4 and FE-2 in close second. I use the Holga a lot and have recently been dusting off the Speedgraphic 4x5 along with an ancient calumet 4x5 rail camera. Though I've been shying away from the Holga lately because it just seems to have become incredibly trendy. Sort of like what happened to Infrared film years ago. In the darkroom is my Bessler 45H.

As far as lighting goes, I prefer natural light, but I am very much a single light shooter (or at least the appearance of a single light). I've been using a Dynalite 2000XL. The light is usually "from on high" on a boom in a Chimera soft box. A lot of this came out of shooting commercial advertising for a bridal designer. I couldn't stand the look that typified what was happening in the industry at the time, but you were challenged with not just making a model look good, but making a white dress with white details look good with clients who need to see every bead and thread. So I came up with a simple lighting scheme that has followed me ever since.
We were also shooting on medium format transparency film, so learning the control of every bit of exposure and lab tweaking became invaluable. The oilgraphed "Greystone" series in the gallery are from the late part of that period. I'd love to branch out more in terms of fashion again. I miss it.

Oilgraphing is an original process developed by yourself. What is it and how did it come to be?

Around 1994 I was struggling to find an emergent look to the work... a light coming out of the darkness. I wasn't able to achieve it through any traditional photographic means and I realized that what I was really looking for was light coming out of an actual physical darkness. I remembered the scratch drawings we did as kids where you scratched off the black ink from over colored paper and I thought 'you know, this should work with a print.' So I took a small 4x5 print, covered it in oil color and did essentially the same thing. And there it was. It was very raw, very simple, but it was the first oilgraph. I called them oilgraphs because that just seemed to express what it was. They have evolved enormously over the years as I've become more of a painter. Ideally there should be the feeling that you are seeing a world seen and unseen at the same time.

In 1997 I was lecturing on the technique when someone asked whether I could just come in and show them how it's done. I was a little hesitant about it at first, but thought why not? So I prepared a piece a month later and set up the easel. Now at this stage the piece is entirely black with oil. You can't see anything. I lit candles, put on music and just started. I thought it would be incredibly boring to watch, but then something sort of magic happened. The image slowly began to emerge, abstract at first and then coming into cohesion. Since I only had a limited amount of time, it happened quickly and I was forced to make bold permanent choices; choices I never would have made in the studio. When it was done I was seeing the piece for the first time along with them. One woman cried. It was an incredible experience and I've done them ever since and never going over ten minutes. Nearly a third of the work is from performance.

"Ideally there should be the feeling that you are seeing a world seen and unseen at the same time."

Although you are a very experimental artist, I'd like to know: Are you completely self-taught or did you also go to art school?

Self-taught. I felt very strongly about this. I had a fear of anyone having a say in aesthetic rules or how I learned. But that's also just the way I am wired. I'm not good in a classroom setting. A guidance counselor in Jr. High taught me 3 point lighting and it took me years to unlearn it. Part of your brain latches on to a "this is how you light" and it can be a huge block to finding your own way. Believe it or not there is a tendency to want to draw inside the lines and I constantly have to push past that.

But being self-taught is not an excuse for not knowing the rules or mastering the technical aspects of the medium. If you're going to be serious about the work then you need to master its fundamentals. If you don't, at some point that lack of knowledge will fail you. I'm still amazed that so many photographers don't know how to coordinate shutter speed and aperture since they rely solely on their cameras. So I studied everything I could. I found out what other shooters were using for film, for developers, for paper, for cameras, everything. If the results didn't reveal what I wanted, I found out why. This took years.

At the same time I also had to learn how to let go and be open to the mystery. Now everyone has their methodology. For me it's setting the stage well first and getting the technical out of the way. Then the shoot becomes more like theatre.

"If you're going to be serious about the work then you need to master its fundamentals. If you don't, at some point that lack of knowledge will fail you."

Your art seems to be of the traditional trade through and through. Do you ever use any digital tools in your process of creation?

I don't. Everything is entirely physical, but let me say that I am in no way anti-digital. I have a Nikon D200 and love it to death and shoot with it every day but I don't really use it for the oilgraphs or exhibition prints. For me personally I need to touch what I do otherwise it's like the baby you can't hold. In the creation of the work every stage requires making physical choices that effect the next stage. From actual light passing through grain to the way a print is toned in an actual bath to the colliding of actual black and burnt sienna paint on a physical textured surface in a slashing brush stroke creates a building series of unique events that culminates in an original. That's incredibly important to me. Like a painting each piece is imbued with not just those choices, environmental circumstances and happy accidents but also a part of myself. Perhaps some visual aspects may be mimicked on a computer but they can't be discovered. There's no 'undo' on a paint brush. Knowing that forces you to be incredibly intentional.

I've shot my digital next to the Mamiya and you simply can't compare the results in quality and nuance. Film has a life and depth that eludes digital. But that being said, I am always open to anything that furthers the art and makes it more valuable to collectors. I will be experimenting with some digital compositing from film scans and then strike archival giclee prints to work from. For an upcoming series I'll need to construct cityscapes and battles scenes that simply can't be done in camera only.

"Like a painting each piece is imbued with not just those choices, environmental circumstances and happy accidents but also a part of myself."

What's the variety of materials you utilize in any of your oilgraphs?

The first is the print. They are often printed in collage form so when I start it looks very much like a jigsaw puzzle and then everything is glued down with an archival glue. Depending on the piece, that is about a day's work just there. Then there is the base it's mounted on. I've used everything from canvas to metal, but anymore, except for the smallest pieces, I build out custom wooden panels that are then gessoed. Sometimes other objects find their way in. I'm fond of bones and other tiny relics. There are often other images buried in there that sort of lurk or sometimes can't be seen at all. Then it's lots and lots of oil paint. There are a few pieces that I've rubbed graphite or pastel over.
Then there's blood. That's something that not surprisingly happened by accident. It's more symbolic that actually visual, but almost every major piece has some in it. I usually wait until I have some accident around the studio and then put a tiny touch somewhere. Then a part of me is literally part of the work. Then after everything is fully cured I varnish the piece to protect it and give it a cohesive finish. I spent months working out a beeswax and Damar blend, but now I'm really fond of a 2:1 blend of Matt and Glossy Soluvar.

"Then there's blood."

What makes you do what you do? What's the driving force behind your art?

This may sound cliche. Love. Truly, madly, deeply. Love for the subject, spiritual love and all of the things that emerge from it. Longing, loss, desire, passion, pain. Caught up in all of that is the emotional honesty of the subject's story and mine, even if that cannot be literally seen. As long as it's felt that's all that matters. If I do my job, then it'll be there. The shoots are always an intimate dance. There's something that happens when one is accepted as they are and not made to hit a mark. There ends up being not just discovery, but healing, for both them and me.

But in the end, I simply have to do it. I don't know any other way to go about life. I process everything in my life through art. I've shot every funeral that I've been to and every relationship. It's all there.

"I don't know any other way to go about life. I process everything in my life through art."

What one specific goal do you hold with every piece or series you work on?

The emotional expression and the erasing of time. That the piece is honest and when it's done I've expressed in a visual question what needed to get out. If I succeeded then the image should be not just the subject, not just me, but a confluence of story where the actual moment of it's taking is removed. My favorite images have no trace of the moment.

What brought you and your work to the online world?

It was probably one of the many online communities that I've joined over the years. I saw the ability to upload an image and then realized the implication of that. It's relatively recent. I didn't have a computer for many years.

You are traveling quite a lot. Is visiting different places all over the world a major source of inspiration and motives for your art?

Oh, absolutely. Every street, every city, every railway has a voice. There is such inspiration (and danger sometimes) in the journey. Then the journey always translates into some kind of personal metaphor. The bridge becomes someone you love's reaching arm, the empty piazza your heart. Nothing is ever literally what it is. Then there are the people you meet. It's overwhelming. It takes me months and months to emotionally process any particular trip. I've been very fortunate to be able to travel as much as I do. I'm being sent to Thailand in October to work on a series dealing with the slave trade there and in Cambodia.

What made you join deviantART in particular?

It didn't take having a computer for very long before I discovered deviantART. As soon as I found dA, that was it. I knew I had found a home and community to share and see work. I've made many real world friends here. I've sold prints here. I've shot with and will be shooting with other deviants here. I've been inspired by the work and follow a number of artists' art journeys. The ability to see others' art and dialog with them about it worldwide is a rich experience. Then the comments people have sent me over the years have profoundly moved me and even given me something to point to in some of the harder chapters.

It was also on dA that I rediscovered my poetry voice. In the deviations' artist's comments space I just began writing straight onto the page. It's now become a part of my work. I don't know if that would have happened anywhere else. Those pieces probably wouldn't exist had it not been for deviantART.

"The ability to see others' art and dialogue with them about it worldwide is a rich experience."

What kind of art do you enjoy looking at most?

I love portraiture in all forms and there are some incredible portraitists here. I naturally have a proclivity for the realists, but especially the ones who have a heightened or haunting sense of reality. Wyeth, Nerdrum, Rembrandt or in photography, Avedon, Sally Mann, Ralph Gibson, Julia Margaret Cameron. I could go on and on. But I also love the abstractionists like Rauchenburg and Rothko. But like in my own work, it needs to feel emotionally honest. I think that's why I struggle with liking a lot of conceptual art, because much of it is the expression of an idea and not an emotion.

For using our deviantART Prints Service, how do you go about translating your traditional work into digital?

I reshoot the pieces on 120 film and scan them in. Then I use photoshop to clean up specular highlights and adjust the contrast and tone to match the original as closely as possible. I'll enhance the images a bit for the web to reproduce what a piece looks like with good light. I keep the borders and text simple. I'm not much a graphic designer in that respect.

When and if you ever have any at all, what do you do to try to get rid of artistic blocks?

I just shoot with someone. Something will always show up. I don't get blocks really unless I'm writing. I very rarely have a concept going into a shoot so what is discovered during a shoot is far more inspiring than anything I could come up with. If I'm running low then I head off to a museum or pour myself into a book. You have to fill the well as they say.

What is your current profession?

I'm fortunate to be a full time working artist. I do a good amount of commissions and sell through a number of galleries.

Are there currently any artistic projects of yours you'd like to tell us about?

Thanks for asking. There will be a couple coming up. One as I mentioned will be the Thailand project. The slave trade in Thailand and Cambodia is insidious and widespread. I'll be working with an organization that uses art and media to raise awareness about the situation. I haven't figured out what I'll be doing yet, but I suspect it will be a mixture of photojournalism and staged portraiture much in the vein of what I did with the Stations of the Cross series.

And speaking of the Stations of the Cross, I'm putting together a grant that will hopefully cover the expenses of doing the next series which will be "In the Time of the Judges" based upon the old testament text. The text is filled with heartbreak and there are stories that I've never seen depicted in art anywhere. I'm seeing forty pieces.

"It will be challenging to say the least. It will be like staging a war."

What do you deem as your most significant accomplishments in your life to this day as an artist?

Yikes. Well, one is simply being able to make a living at what I love. I'm grateful for that every day. In terms of the art, it would have to be the Stations and the mural The Awakening. Those works took me past where I thought I could go artistically, spiritually and physically and delivered me into a deeper place in the art. The response back from their exhibitions has been some of the most meaningful of my career.

Is there anything you want to achieve in your life but were not able to yet?

Oh man, yes.
I started doing films at about the same time I started doing photography. At one point I really thought it would be my career, but the light came on over the photography instead. I miss film very much but one has to make choices as to where they put their energies. I think there may be a time in the not so distant future where that may come back. Until then these are my little movies.

And then there is a book. I'm at the point in my career where a book is not just a nice idea, but a necessity. The catalog of work is there and I'm grateful to all those who have written in wanting to know if I have a book and supporting the work. It's been really overwhelming. I'm looking for the right publisher who has the right sensitivity and integrity. As you know it's not that simple of course.there's convincing them to publish. Failing all options, I will self publish, but I will have a book.

"I'm at the point in my career where a book is not just a nice idea, but a necessity."

End. The floor is all yours. Do you have a final message you want to pass on to the readers, fellow deviants and artists?

Do what you love and never what you think you should do or what you think will garner more comments. Avoid trends. I know everyone else is doing this or that, but ask where are you in the mix? Find your voice.that comes from experimentation and often with traditional materials. I say that simply because there are infinitely more variables that can potentially lead you in a unique direction. Be relentless and filled with grace.

Oh, and if Angelo can add the following category:

Photography > People & Portraits > Self-Portraits > Bored > Bathtubs > Slitting My Wrists

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_{Interview conducted by $spinegrinder. Thanks a lot, =kevissimo!}


VISIT: Kevin Rolly Fine Art & Kevissimo's Prints Store


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