WHERE: Arts Place, Auglaize/Mercer Center.
WHEN: Opens Monday, September 19 and remains on view through October 28, 2016. Note: There will be a free reception open to the public on Friday, September 23 from 6:00-8:00 pm.
Dan Knepper Exhibit
Inspired by artists Jane Paul Angelhart and Christopher Leeper, and having studied with Mary Whyte, James Toogood and Antonio Masi, Knepper has become known for his watercolors, which have won many local, regional and state competitions. He has also done demonstrations and spoken for many art groups and is a member of the Western Ohio Watercolor Society, the Ohio Watercolor Society and the Portrait Society of America.
His painting, Fallen was a winner in the national Daniel Smith competition and his painting, Morgan was a finalist in the Richeson75 international competition, and was recently in the Adirondacks National Exhibition.
Dan recently finished a 32’ mural for a new school building in Botkins, Ohio and a 5-panel pictorial history of Ferguson Construction in Sidney, Ohio. His work is included in the Airstream Fine Art Invitational, a show of the greatest living landscape painters in the United States of America.
The Botkins Mural contains portraits of inspirational historical figures interacting with Botkins students. The Wright Brothers fly paper airplanes with students with the Wright Flyer overhead. Mark Twain looks over students holding copies of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn.
The mural also references famous works of art. I replaced Norman Rockwell with myself in his Triple Self Portrait. I look past his canvas at a student dressed as Vermeer’s Girl with the Pearl Earring. The Trojan helmet resting on the easel was actually part of Rockwell’s painting.. fortuitous for the Botkins Trojans. The girl in the white shirt is drawing the actual image of Rockwell’s self-portrait.
Near Mark Twain a student has become Huck Finn from an N. C. Wyeth Coca Cola illustration. And there are little discoveries to make. If you look closely you can tell Abraham Lincoln is holding a penny, while the student at his feet is looking at a drawing of Daniel Chester French’s Lincoln Memorial.
The smoke from Apollo 11’s lift-off ties the whole mural together, becoming the clouds behind the Wright Flyer at one end, and becoming Disney’s castle at the other, while Mark Twain’s stern-wheeler floats through the center of it.
Some of the compositional elements are less obvious. The paper airplanes, and the arms throwing them, begin your journey through the composition. If you think of the repetition of the ovals of the heads as they rise and fall, with varying spaces between them,.. over a long horizontal shape, you will be reminded of musical notation. The use of certain colors controls the pace and rhythm through the mural. The moon, Neil Armstrong’s head, his helmet, and the student’s head create a curve that leads to the lift-off…taking you right back to the moon to start over; but your eye doesn’t get trapped. The smoke and the colors keep you moving over the mural but never out of it.
At the far right end a group of students listen to one of my personal heroes, Walt Disney. (The Disney quote, “All our dreams can come true if we have the courage to pursue them.” is painted on a wall in the library near the mural.) The student standing before him is holding an image of Steamboat Willie, the first cartoon with post-production synchronized sound. Look closely and you’ll see Walt is wearing a Mickey Mouse watch. The student at Walt’s feet is working on a Picasso. The bend of her arm keeps your eye from leaving the mural and leads you back into it.
Represented by the Carteret Gallery in Morehead City, North Carolina, the Greenwich House Gallery, Cincinnati and the Atelier Gallery in Charleston, South Carolina, Originally from Amherst, Ohio, Knepper taught art 1-12 for 26 years in Jackson Center and Botkins, Ohio, and currently is a full-time artist living in Jackson Center, Ohio.
MORE DETAILS: http://danknepperart.weebly.com.