Chris Quinnert Artist of the Month. Photos by Catherine Stachowiak
With an “Out of This World” theme, the Kern River Valley Art Association held its Second Saturday reception, January 11.
Chris Quinnert was the Artist of the Month at the KRVAA this month. He carefully chose the pieces in his Artist of the Month wall display to fit the theme for the month.
Quinnert said, “I’ve been doing this since the mid 1970’s, first exploring how to do this with acrylics. Very few of the space ones are done by oils only because I’m used to acrylics with the way you can do different layers.” He uses certain pencils to do the highlights as well.
Quinnert began an interest in space and astronomy, in 1973, when he lived in Thousand Oaks where the sky was darker and his parents gave him a telescope. He moved up to Kern Valley in 1979 where the skies were very dark as well, therefore continuing his interest in Astronomy and painting space themes.
His artwork has advanced since, with his education of Astronomy and scientific things,
and sometimes has a measure of fantasy or a mixture of both fantasy and scientific things.
He sometimes brings his space themed works down to earthly levels, with a baseline of an earthly sky or morning sky with a crescent moon involved. “It’s just a dynamic universe we live in,” he said. “Imagination, so you can take it anywhere you want.”
Quinnert has also photographed landscapes with a wide-angle view and creates landscape paintings. The earthy landscapes the artist creates came after his space themed works and were inspired by his hiking in the high country. He paints his earthly landscapes mostly with oil paints. “I came down to Earth and did earthly things,” he said.
For his landscapes Quinnert was earlier inspired by artists of the 1850s era who painted the natural world.
Quinnert has been an artist since 1975. His work has been shown at the Maturango Museum, the Lancaster Fair, Ridgecrest Fairs, the Kern Valley Museum, and has won awards from the KRVAA. Bakersfield Californian photojournalist Casey Christie once profiled Quinnert’s work in the news.
Interestingly, the same night as Quinnert showed his Artist of the Month wall, former publisher for the Kern River Courier, Michael Batelaan won First Place, Best of Show for his mixed acrylic work titled “Lunar Phases.”
