Fisher College of Business

Legs Crossed
higher resolution 642Kb

Lithograph, 36" x 34"
Colloquium 800

The son of two architects, Peter Kitchell was encouraged to paint at an early age. Although he studied at the California College of Arts and Crafts, he shaped his own education by traveling for several years through Europe and Africa. He taught himself watercolor while living among the Berber and Tuareg tribes.

Kitchell's work consists primarily of shaped, two-dimensional pieces of watercolor on heavy paper, assembled into rectangular sequences and coated with a matte finish. The work is about organic abstraction, yet it evokes the depth, clarity, and horizon level of the landscape tradition and reflects the influences of the landscapes and cultures he has experienced.

My paintings are elements of a story that unconsciously suggest "something." It's all distilled down to a code. You could use African music as an example. Its connotations are of people jumping up and down, so you want to jump up and down when you hear it.

I love color; I delight in it. But ultimately, it all goes back to the fact that each painting is a story. The pieces that are the most successful, interestingly enough, are not the ones that are the most abstract but the ones that are distillations of a feeling.