Two inspired artists featured in art exhibition
By Marcy Stamper - Methow Valley News

Paintings of grandiose mountain scenery and a population of small figures and puppets come together in Confluence Gallery’s new exhibit featuring Northwest artists Rod Weagant and Debi Knight Kennedy.

While their art is superficially – and fundamentally – different, both Weagant and Knight Kennedy draw inspiration from the natural world and from Northwest landscapes and traditions. Weagant paints outdoors to capture the characteristics of light and atmosphere, often sketching directly on his canvas in oils before refining his paintings in the studio. Knight Kennedy draws inspiration from the natural beauty of the land and sea and from the wildlife of the region.

Study with a master carver and Northwest Coast Native artists helped Knight Kennedy to express her attraction to the natural world through sculpture.

“Growing up in, on and around Puget Sound filled me with a great curiosity regarding the ever-present sense of mystery as to who and what else was sharing my playground,” writes Knight Kennedy in her description of a carved mermaid in the show.

Weagant’s large canvases allow the viewer to enter into a resplendent alpine landscape or sense the refreshing splash of a mountain stream portray scenes from the Cascades, Alaska and other regions of the mountain West. Others explore these themes on a more intimate scale. Weagant’s landscapes are vivid and sun-splashed, marked by the high contrast of dazzling light and presented directly and without pretense.

Knight Kennedy blends elemental, organic materials such as caribou antlers, walrus ivory, wood and stone with beads, fabric and words in complex assemblages and marionettes. Much of her work contains humor. A carving from a manzanita root of a man sporting a nest with eggs on his head is “a bit of a cosmic wanderer, a poet/philosopher, and a shamanic space cowboy kind of a guy. What’s not to love?” writes Knight Kennedy.

Curated by Caryl Campbell, the Rod Weagant and Debi Knight Kennedy exhibit runs from April 8 to May 30, with an artists’ reception at the gallery for members, sponsors and their guests this Saturday (April 18) from 4 to 8 p.m.