Spotlight on...Kevin Buckland

Author: Alexxa Gotthardt

Kevin Buckland is a senior Independent Scholar and co-president of Middlebury's Vitality of the Artistic Community Association (VACA) from Westfield, NJ. His paintings can be seen at www.TheRevolutionFactory.com.



The Middlebury Campus: When did you start painting and why?

Kevin Buckland: I started painting alone in my room when I was 13 or 14 and had to. I like painting because it is optimism, you take a blank canvas and assorted sorted colors and then suddenly anything is possible. It is filled and creation begins. The intricacies of the heart manifest, this is unavoidable. Anytime anyone creates anything, they cannot help but express themselves. The trick is to find the truth in your language, to let it be your language and not the language you think others will read best. If you express yourself truly they won't be able to help but feel it.



The Campus: What influences your work most?

KB: Once, in a bar in Mexico someone asked me what I paint. In instant truth, I replied, "my life." I paint so that I can understand what is happening around me.



The Campus: How would you characterize your work?

KB: I don't like to characterize my work. I don't like artistic movements or genres, each person is their own movement. We learn from each other, but any words that lump painters together is inevitably horribly general.



The Campus: Is there a certain message you hope to convey through your work?

KB: I try not to convey things through my work. I try not to force them out. Rather, I prefer to do the act and then see how it feels to look upon the act flat. I have become very political, and I am growing to try to find things in myself that reflect things of the world. Explode the wars and wring the tears.



The Campus: You are one of the heads of VACA...what are your personal hopes for the group and its impact on Middlebury's campus?

KB: My sincerest and deepest hope for Middlebury and for VACA and for art in general is that student art will continue to fill this campus in permanent locations. I am a mural painter. I walk around every day and stare at blank, gaping, white walls. I hope, I hope, to hope that little by little student artists will claim these walls and fill them with themselves and with color. If every year two or three murals were painted on campus, it would only be 15 years or so before this campus was a completely different place, with life and passion flowing from the walls, into the students who walk past them everyday, inspiring them. We learn nothing from white walls.



The Campus: What's next after Middlebury?

KB: When I graduate, I plan to finish the mural I am painting in PALANA and then fly myself away to Barcelona and paint as much as I possibly can. I hope to become a mural painter, to change the world through color and shape - give things that actually have value.