Provocative Exhibit at Windsor Art Center
PAUL ESSENFELD 5/7/09
A lively crowd of Windsor residents, local artists, and friends of the artists gathered this evening at the Windsor Art Center at the Freight House for the opening reception of the Hackcent Paintings and The Rainbow Connection, an exhibition of work by visual artists Kristina Newman Scott and Sam McKinniss. Also on hand was artist Lyle Murphy whose figurative sculpture mixed media installation is in the Art Center's South Gallery.

Visual artists Kristin Newman Scott and Sam McKinniss have teamed up to create this challenging and provocative exhibition that explores language, its use and the impressions we draw from the pronunciation of words made by foreign tongues, and the exploration of love and dreaming from the male perspective. In this case the male being homosexual. McKinniss says about his work “The Muppet Movie has served as a starting point of inspiration for this new body of work, which I am calling “The Rainbow Connection” after Kermit the Frog’s famous opening number. I am inspired by the combination of childlike naïveté, longing, hope in fatalism and all the talk about rainbows, love and dreaming.

Newman-Scott is the visual arts director at Real Art Ways. She was born and raised in Kingston, Jamaica, and is a practicing artist. She joined the Real Art Ways team in 2005. Talking about her work Ms. Newman- Scott said, “My work has always explored social and class prejudices, sexual power struggles, and preconceived notions of identity particularly in relationship to my “third world” upbringing. My “Hackcent” paintings are about barriers of dialect that I've encountered and observed in my time living in the US, as well as broader issues of cultural expectation and stereotyping, particularly around language.”

Sam McKinniss was born in 1985 in Northfield Minnesota, but moved to Connecticut shortly after.  In 2007, he received a BFA from the Hartford Art School at the University of Hartford, where he studied painting under Stephen Brown and Carol Padberg.  His work rarely strays from portraiture, exploring themes related to desire, love, pop music, the male gaze, the gay experience and the history of painting. In 2008 his first major solo exhibition, TRUE LOVE at Real Art Ways ran concurrently with his first solo museum show, FIERCE DOUBT, exhibited at the New Britain Museum of American Art in New Britain, Connecticut.  He currently lives and works in Hartford

Lyle Murphy was born and raised in Coventry, CT spending his days at the town lake, rivers and surrounding woods. He graduated from MCC with a Visual Arts degree, spent a year at Edinboro University in PA (not quite as glamorous as Scotland) studying Animation and finally finished his undergraduate career at Mass Art in Boston with a Sculpture degree. During his time there he concentrated on figurative sculpture, mainly life-sized works using clay and casting the finished pieces in plaster, and large installations. Besides keeping the Real Art Ways staff happy with popcorn, haiku and beet cake, Lyle enjoys spending his time creating new art work, writing music, watching animation, baking and contemplating life's little wonders, such as... why is it when crackers become stale they are soft but when bread becomes stale it is hard? Ah, life's mysteries!