‘I was drawing once, and I just put a few lines in, and it made a landscape.’

Kurk Devine is a retired factory worker who wants his artwork to be enjoyed by others. He used to attend the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, but he was more curious about the history of art. He has had a 50-year career as an artist using oil paints, acrylics, watercolors, and liner markers, recently favoring acrylics and watercolors. His pieces are all hand-free sketches, and he also uses methods of collaging in his work. Devine has exhibited in galleries such as The Metropolitan Gallery and the Wisconsin Painter and Sculptor Show.

Kavina Spinks: What is your employment?

Kurt Devine: Oh, I’m retired now. I worked in factories and supported my family, my children. I was a single father, and I worked at different factories. Right now, I’m semi-retired, but I helped my wife publicize her book. We travel a lot; we go to Europe to publicize it.

Kavina Spinks: How long have you been an artist for?

Kurt Devine: 50 years, give or take a couple years.

Kavina Spinks: What are your mediums that you use?

Kurt Devine: Oil paints or acrylics or watercolors, and then liner markers that I use with the watercolors. So, it’s been mainly acrylics and watercolors lately, with the addition of the liner markers to take advantage of the cross-hatching. How it’s different from the paint, to combine those and get a richer experience.

Kavina Spinks: Which medium would you say is your favorite to use?

Kurt Devine: Oil paints, but I haven’t used them for a while, so I don’t really know what I do now in oil paints, but I love the other two mediums too; it’s still very satisfying.

Kavina Spinks: Have you ever started a piece and then say you don’t like it and throw it away? Or did you keep everything you’ve ever done?

Kurt Devine: I’ve thrown some away, mostly when I was first starting, but now I keep. There’s some I don’t you know, not crazy about. I keep them anyway because now I have this idea of collaging, so I might take parts of one. I have a bunch of drawings where I cut them up and put them in here. So even if I don’t like it, it could still be useful for something. It could be a figure that I like.

Kavina Spinks: Which piece do you think is your favorite? Do you have a favorite piece that you made?

Kurt Devine: It’s called Amelia, and it’s kind of a woman with a visor from a different reality or something. There’s a reflection of the clouds in her visor, and I just sometimes I’m just happy with something coming up that I don’t know what it means exactly.

Kavina Spinks: What’s your goal for your work?

Kurt Devine: Just to kind of show different realities, different feelings that could be had, not outside of just the reproduction of what’s in front of you. I was good at that when I was younger, but I wanted more. I was drawing once, and I just put a few lines in, and it made a landscape. I was looking up a hill, and I thought that’s exactly what they do in, like the old masters, they don’t do everything they’re seeing, they pick and choose. And then I kind of went from that to seeing, well, you could do more than that, you could go outside of that, and it would still have a feeling that you were somewhere. So, the feeling of things that have happened and it just is, opens things more.

Kavina Spinks: Where do you see yourself as your future end goal for your work?

Kurt Devine: Refining what I’ve done in the past and rethinking it, revisiting it, and having a conversation with my younger self, it’s much richer now. I really enjoy working. And you know, everybody would like a show that would highlight their work; I could have a retrospective. Yeah, that would be nice.