Check out Dylan Kennedy’s Artwork

Today we’d like to introduce you to Dylan Kennedy.

Dylan, we’d love to hear your story and how you got to where you are today both personally and as an artist.
When I moved to the DFW 5 years ago, I had big dreams and no idea what I was doing. I’d just graduated from art school, so I decided that moving to the “big city” was the right move. My dream was to be a mural artist, which as many can imagine isn’t the easiest field to jump into.

I remember telling friends back home my plans for moving to Fort Worth with few connections, and hearing things like “but why Fort Worth??” While calling home my parents would always say, “are you sure you don’t want to get a nice stable office job somewhere?” And I would always tell them, I knew… the metroplex is growing, and new developments were popping up left and right. I saw the opportunity to hop into a bigger sandbox and really make an impact with my art, and so far, that decision has been fruitful.

Since then I’ve painted murals throughout the area, from kids’ rooms and commercial lettering signs to full-scale custom artworks. I’ve also had fun doing live paintings and even body painting for private event venues. I’m currently juggling opportunities to work with an upcoming yoga studio, a coworking space and my first public art mural for Downtown Arlington. My artistic journey has definitely been exciting to say the least!

We’d love to hear more about your art. What do you do you do and why and what do you hope others will take away from your work?
I first started painting my freshman year in high school, and while I love to paint big, epic murals, my original passion was for oil canvases. I’m mostly self-taught, and while I graduated with a Bachelor’s in Fine Art, I think that most of what I’ve learned about what it takes to build an artistic career took place outside of art school and in the world of people: mentors, creatives, and fellow entrepreneurs. Life experiences and making mistakes, to me, are the best education.

Much of my personal work is influenced by hyper-realism and surrealist art, juxtaposing different elements together to form an imaginative, immersive world fraught with social and philosophical themes such as technology’s effect on nature and human experience. Each piece becomes a tangle of contradictions: cerebral yet visceral, organic yet synthetic, familiar yet strange, taut yet explosive. Rather than just tell a story, however, my goal is to create a sense of motion and suspense to make a thought-provoking yet visceral impact.

Lately I’ve been stretching my creativity by creating as many new experiences as possible: checking out gallery and museum shows, exploring new music, observing manmade natural structures and watching animated short films, which is where I think a lot of the energy and movement in my artwork comes from. I often form ideas intuitively, throwing myself into an experimental state to get my gears going until I’ve “discovered” the right idea. I’ll sketch, take photos, put together a music video, make up a cocktail, fold some paper. But really, my best ideas come when I’m just driving or doing the dishes.

Artists face many challenges, but what do you feel is the most pressing among them?
I think that doubt and uncertainty play a big part in a lot of artists’ lives and works. Whether it’s taking risks in their art or putting that art out into the world, unfortunately there’s not a lot of practical guidance taught in university education or encouragement by society. I think many artists get caught up in chasing fame and attention rather than taking leaps with their art. There’s also this distorted stereotype of the artist as this misunderstood, scattered mess that our culture carries.

Artists need to have more faith in ourselves, take bigger risks. I know the artist’s struggle, the rejections and commissions falling through. But being a professional artist takes a lot of courage and an insane amount of passion, so it’s important to embrace the challenges that we face.

Do you have any events or exhibitions coming up? Where would one go to see more of your work? How can people support you and your artwork?
My mural works are pretty spread out, but one of the best places to see work I’ve done is the Cosmic Cafe in Dallas. The cafe is this vibrant, bohemian Indian fusion restaurant/ yoga studio in the middle of Oaklawn Ave, a colorful house full of stories and decade’s worth of paintings covering every square inch of the place. I worked there for a little over a year contributing artworks and there’s a peacock painted on a bamboo fence that’s pretty visible. Otherwise people can see my portfolio on my website and social media pages listed below.

Also, there will be a three-day arts festival September 13-15 2018 in Arlington to celebrate the new public art murals created by myself and other talented artists, kicking off Downtown Arlington’s designation as a new Culture District by the Texas Commission for the Arts. There will be vendors selling art, food trucks and music, and I’ll be selling art and performing a live painting. People can drop by to check out the mural progress in action at Dyno-Rock Climbing Gym throughout the month of July.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.dylankennedymurals.com
• Phone: 806-674-7493
• Email: info@dylankennedymurals.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dylankennedymurals/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dylankennedymurals/
• Other: https://www.brewingarts.org/

Image Credit:
Dylan Kennedy.