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April 15, 2005 > Arts & Entertainment > Exhibit reveals breadth of Texas artist’s repertoire

Exhibit reveals breadth of Texas artist’s repertoire

By Tina Hinojosa | Thresher staff

Born and raised in Refugio, Texas, Kermit Oliver grew up among a family of ranchers — an unlikely background for the first American to produce silk-screen scarf designs for the Parisian fashion great Hermés. Over the course of his career, Oliver developed an interest in folk-themed art in the rural Southern environment and often combines themes of mythology, religion and history in his works.

Notes from a Child’s Odyssey: The Art of Kermit Oliver at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston traces Oliver’s artistic production though the last 40 years. The retrospective includes more than 90 paintings and sculptures that highlight the persistence of symbolic rural imagery in his works. The exhibit also showcases Oliver’s ability to evolve stylistically; he blends classical and contemporary devices to create a style he calls ‘symbolic realism.’

The self-reflection within the landscapes and portraits makes the exhibit unique. For example, three paintings, all fashioned from acrylic on masonite, each depict an African-American cowboy — ­possibly a self-portrait of Oliver — with a workhorse and a pastoral countryside in the background. ‘K.J’s Daemon’ (1970) depicts the man sitting on his horse, facing away from the viewer. Intense shadows add impressive multidimensionality to the work; but the painting’s figurative nature is lost in Oliver’s traditional techniques, making it difficult to find a deeper, symbolic meaning in the work.

‘Palmetto’ (1981), the second painting, is similar to ‘K.J.’s Daemon’ in that the cowboy is sitting on his horse, dressed in the stereotypical rancher garb of a white Stetson, red handkerchief, white oxford shirt and black leather gun holster. In the third painting, ‘Let’ (1998), Oliver makes an obvious transition, as the cowboy from the first two images ages significantly and is dressed more somberly, with a gray down jacket and black necktie. He poses differently as well, standing beside his horse while a large tree watches over them. The contrast between the three paintings’ images is especially stark because the artist’s procedural techniques are the same.

While the aforementioned series has a distinct folk theme, Oliver was able to use the same materials to produce a strikingly different scene in ‘Roughneck’ (1979). The painting depicts three men in work helmets with tightly gritted teeth as they attempt to insert an oil-drilling pipe into the ground. The flat imagery of the scene is broken only by the men’s flexed biceps and pained facial expressions. It is painted with brighter hues than the ranching images, so it seems Oliver equates his ranching background with traditional earth tones and industrialism with brighter, futuristic hues.

What makes Oliver such a standout contemporary artist is his unique portrayal of figurative symbols that represent social or personal themes. Oliver continually innovates and re-visits themes, something that this retrospective effectively highlights. Unlike that of many artists, Oliver’s work cannot be organized into groupings such as ‘formative years’ or ‘the ranching period.’

For example, a highly abstract acrylic on canvas work entitled ‘Burning Plain’ (1968) shows a connection between naked, primitive men. The work is haunting, painted in all black, red and orange hues. The men themselves are delineated with subtle outlines, but the only texture given to their otherwise flatly represented bodies comes from angry scribbles of crimson across their legs and arms. When viewed from left to right, the painting has striking movement. The first man faces backward while the next coyly turns his head forward; each subsequent figure takes strides ahead. Painted during the Vietnam era, this image is perhaps an allegory for social revolution; however, when placed within the context of this particular show, it is most important to remember the elasticity of Oliver’s artistic capabilities.

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