Ron Kingswood

Moon Rising

Period

2000-2018

Dimensions

W.	78 in;	H.	50 in;
W.	198.12 cm;	H.	127 cm;

Creation Date

2015

Description

Signed and dated upper right: Kingswood 2015

Born in Canada in 1959, Ron Kingswood’s love of both nature and painting traces back to frequent hunting trips he took throughout northern Ontario with his father. At the age of nine, Kingswood began painting with watercolors, depicting the animals he observed on these trips in the detailed, illustrative style that characterized traditional wildlife painting in North America. This style saw him through high school, his formal art education at the H.B. Beal Secondary School in Ontario, and his earliest commercial successes. However, Kingswood’s works underwent a radical change in the mid-1980s. Kingswood moved from acrylic to oil paint, adopting a new concern with large format canvases, and, most significantly, switched from representational realism to a distinctly impressionistic approach.

Kingswood defines this approach – which he calls “susceptivism” – as an expression of a deeply emotional reaction to color, something the artist finds more challenging and personally satisfying than his earlier style. Though the natural world is still at the heart of the works, Kingswood’s paintings now reflect a greater emphasis on color and design than on subject matter. Negative space and gestural markings suggest light and atmosphere; off-center focal points give the wildlife a sense of being just glimpsed; and the large canvases draw viewers into works that are experienced as much as they are viewed. The resulting expressions of movement, energy, and emotion offer a unique view of nature itself.

Nature has always been the only teacher, not other individuals. There is a single universal content that we use which is shrouded in form. I tend to perceive nature as form and structure.

Ron Kingswood

Kingswood’s works are in such collections as the London Regional Art Museum, Ontario, Canada; London Regional Historical Museum, London, England; Woodson Art Museum, Wausau, Wisconsin; the World Wildlife Fund, Zurich, Switzerland; and the National Museum of Wildlife Art, Jackson Hole, Wyoming. His paintings have also been featured in the magazines Wildlife Art and Southwest Art. Kingswood is a contributor to the Woodson Art Museum’s Birds in Art exhibit, and his works have been exhibited in galleries and museums throughout Canada and the United States. Kingswood currently lives and works in Sparta, Ontario.

Styles / Movements

Realism, Western

Incollect Reference Number

163245