The Art of Michael Kline
Join us for an opening reception for Change: The Art of Michael Kline.
On view in the Peterborough Town Library Community Art Gallery from the first week of October until the last week of November.
About the Artist:
I’ve been (which is to say, I’ve identified as) an artist since the age of five. That was when I overheard my kindergarten teacher say to another woman in the room that there was something special about a drawing of mine hanging on the wall. It was a typical child’s drawing of a person, except I’d drawn the eyes almond shaped instead of the more developmentally expected circles or dots. Now, in order to have drawn them that way I assume that it was something I’d noticed and wanted to replicate, so perhaps I was born with an innate ability to graphically replicate visual things I noticed. Some might thus say that I was a born artist, though I think true artistry of any kind has deeper origins than the ability to replicate what you perceive, something more to do with the soul.
In any case, this (unconscious) discovery that I could do something that made people think I was special took hold, and I continued to make drawings and be recognized for my talent, eventually majoring in art in college. By then, life experience had led me to experiment with what I drew and painted, and I was drawn to professors who were more interested in using art to express one’s inner world more than outer appearances. Thus began several decades of making art that I eventually came to realize symbolized my feelings and spiritual world view.
Soon I had a young family and, though I had begun to sell my paintings, I made nowhere near enough to support them through my art. Through fortuitous circumstances I became a Waldorf teacher and made my living that way, though always making art in my spare time. Thirty years passed and life eventually led me to being able to focus solely on making and selling my art. I opened a gallery/studio space in Wilton and lived that life for about three years. Then I had an eye-opening experience: I realized that, to a large extent, my identity as an artist was built on that early childhood experience of feeling special. It fulfilled a need to be noticed in a way that I was otherwise not getting. And at the age of 61 I realized that this was no longer necessary. From one day to the next I lost the urge to make art (or at least I lost the unconscious compulsion to do so), and I closed my gallery.
Since then (about eight months ago) the only thing along those lines I’ve been drawn to do is to take photos of the sky with my phone camera. There are several aspects that make this an interesting area of exploration for me, which I won’t go into here. But that explains the three photo prints in this exhibit otherwise dedicated to showing a few of the artworks that were spared from the purge following my gallery closure.
Peterborough Town Library, located downtown at the corner of Main and Concord/Rt 202, has a large meeting room, study rooms, classroom, and a board room available to the public.