From the river city to the Ozarks.

I was born and raised in Fort Smith, a working river city of brick, rail, and long pale winters. I learned to look from a slight distance: Garrison Avenue after closing, the floodlights on the yard, the Arkansas River the color of pewter. That is still how I stand in front of a canvas.

In my twenties I moved north into the Ozarks and settled in Fayetteville. The university town was quieter than the river, and I could afford a garage studio behind a house off Crossover — hot in July, a space heater in January. The paintings here were made in that room over the last year and a half.

I work in oil, sometimes with wax or a last pass of metal leaf. Nothing is an edition. The pictures keep returning to the same ground: industrial night in Fort Smith, wet streets after a Fayetteville rain, an orchard above the Boston Mountains in winter. When a work sells, it is crated in Northwest Arkansas and it does not come back.

Write me for inquiries and studio visits — kevinltran.art@gmail.com or through Contact. If you are new to collecting from the studio, start with how collecting works.