Character Building: The Emotive Watercolor Portraits and Figures of Keinyo White

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Keinyo White uses challenging perspectives and bold contrasts to bring portraits of his friends to life.

By Austin R. Williams

The watercolor portraits of Keinyo White show us the figure and nothing but the figure. The model’s surroundings are absent, aside from perhaps a chair. In many cases even his or her clothing is rendered minimally. Each painting offers us a direct confrontation with a person, the force of which is amplified by unusual angles and dramatic foreshortening. White’s paintings clearly are the work of an artist who engages and responds to his models, and who wants us to do so as well.

The Joy of Painting

“Part of the joy of painting for me is getting to work with people,” White says. “Being an artist, by nature, can be an isolating experience, so I like to get out and be social. Working with the model is a big part of the experience.” He sees the resulting work, in part, as a collaboration. “I’m not a one-man band,” he says. “These paintings wouldn’t exist without all the people who have taken time to sit for me.”

White, an American who lives in New Zealand, has always been interested in the figure, although his exact artistic aspirations have changed throughout the years. “When I went to art school, I first wanted to be a comic book artist,” he says. “But I had a great Professor who steered me in the direction of painting. I spent a year living in Rome, and then I really started to get into painting the figure. When I graduated, I discovered Andrew Wyeth [American, 1917-2009], whose work had a big impact, and I started painting portraits and the figure from there.”

More Hopeful

Much of White’s early work addressed social issues — in particular the challenges of being a Black artist in a mostly white art world.

“Throughout history there haven’t been a lot of Black artists represented in the American art world.” White says, “I always felt I had something to prove — that I could be successful at a thing that hasn’t been a successful venture for people of my color. A lot of my earlier work involved my reflections on the frustration of that.”

Over the years, though, White began to feel he was creating socially conscious art out of a feeling of obligation. This sparked a change that eventually led him to the figurative work he has been pursuing in recent years. “I got to a point where I realized that I’m not obligated to make anything other than what I want to make,” he says. “There’s no point in being an artist if I can’t make what I want and what I enjoy.” White feels that his figure paintings present a decidedly more hopeful outlook than his earlier, more activist work.

The way in which White approaches and frames the figure has also evolved. In recent years, most of his paintings have presented their subjects as vignettes against a simple or nonexistent background — usually just the white of the paper. In many cases, White doesn’t paint all parts of the figure; he will leave a torso, perhaps, or an arm depicted only with a light pen line. Together, these techniques create significant drama, with rich, detailed parts of figures both contrasting with and blending into swathes of negative space.

A Minimalist Approach

“My minimalist approach to background came about out of art school, in a way,” White says. “In school, everything you make for four years has to be a totally complete image. After that, as my work progressed and I found my own voice, I decided that I didn’t want my paintings to look so picture-perfect. I came to this realization: I’ve got this sort of detailed style, and if I’m going to make it as perfect as a photo, why even do it? I found that having objects in the background detracted from the figure, so I stopped putting them in. That progressed to using a simple wash background, which progressed to just showing the figure against a stark white setting.”

White always welcomes the opportunity to try something new, which is one reason he chooses dramatically foreshortened perspectives in many paintings, such as Wandering Star, Check Your Head, and Prince Paul. “For me, painting is a challenge,” he says. “It’s a challenge to get the composition and drawing right, and I like that. I’m not really interested or focused on work with traditional, straightforward viewpoints. Some people are amazing at that, but it doesn’t work for me. I like to test what I can do.”

Friends, Family, Fighting Partners

Most of White’s models are people he knows from his everyday life. The fondness and respect White feels for them come through both in the paintings themselves and in White’s reflections on his subjects. For example, the subject of Berimbolo is a former martial-arts training partner of White’s from Washington, D.C. “He was a great grappler and had become a good friend in a short period of time,” White says. The painting is one of the artist’s favorites. “I like the stark colors against the white background and the white gi. The only real color is in his face and his belt.”

White uses certain models for several paintings. For instance, Sovereign, Bright Star, and Wandering Star all depict a friend’s daughter. Wandering Star, the second of these paintings, is one of the artist’s largest works to date. “It was insanely detailed,” he recalls, citing the dress and the couch as particular challenges. “I thought, how will I be able to paint that level of detail at a large size while keeping with the way I work?” In typical fashion, he embraced the opportunity to tackle something new and difficult. The painting came together in the end. The girl’s warm skin and the candy stripes of the couch popping dramatically off the white background.

Dedicated to the Thing Itself

White first came to watercolor through practical necessity. He was illustrating children’s books, and oil paints wouldn’t dry in enough time for him to meet deadlines. It didn’t hurt that watercolors were less expensive; in New Zealand many paints have to be imported, and prices for oils are “ridiculously expensive.” He felt in tune with the medium almost as soon as he began to use it. “I like the vibrancy of watercolor,” he says. “I like that it’s fast, and I like the way I can get the colors to meld in a way that I can’t with oils.”

Watercolor also appeals to White’s desire for challenge. “It’s a temperamental, exciting medium,” he says. “You can get it right, or you might have to start over. I have a very tight style and I like painting large watercolors, which makes it more of a problem-solving process. The colors run and bleed; I have to piece it together in my mind as I’m working on it.”

The artist prefers Schmincke watercolors. But, because of their price, he uses them sparingly and only for powerful colors, such as cadmiums. For years he has used the same simple palette: white, black, cadmium red, cadmium yellow, alizarin crimson, ultramarine blue, a purple, a deep green, raw sienna and raw umber.

“A teacher set me up with this palette in college,” White says. “His basic idea was that you should be able to make any painting with these colors. If I need something that I can’t make from this palette, I may use another paint sparingly.” The artist used to paint strictly with watercolor; lately he has used a mixture of transparent watercolor and gouache, supplemented with pen and ink. He works on thick, 600 gsm (300-lb.) cold-pressed Hahnemühle paper.

White’s Process

White’s process begins with a photo session. “I generally work from photographs for a couple of reasons,” White says. “Outside of painting, I’m a super-busy guy — I’ve got two young daughters and hold down two ‘normal’ jobs. Also, most of the people I paint are busy and don’t have time to sit for hours. Using photos is just a natural result of that.

“The model comes over and I explain what I have in mind,” White continues. “If I haven’t yet worked with the person, it can be a lengthy process, but if it’s someone I’ve painted before, it can move right along.” After the shoot, White goes through his photos and if he sees one that he thinks would make a good painting, he prints it out at a large scale to match the size of his paper. Using a lightboard, he traces the image on his watercolor paper. “I draw out the entire image in fine detail,” he says. “Because the paper I use is so thick, it’s a painstaking process.”

When the drawing is finished, White begins painting. “I always start with the face, because there’s no point spending hours detailing other parts, then messing up the face,” he says. “But I only work on the face until it’s 90 percent complete. I never finish it, because if I do I’ll lose interest in the rest of the piece.” He works over the image light to dark, and puts the back- ground in last, if at all. It’s a deliberate process, with the artist repeatedly putting down a color, letting it dry and then layering over it. “I don’t work fast and loose,” he says. “It’s a bit of a nontraditional style.”

Unconventional Influences

Also unconventional, or at least unexpected, are some of the artist’s influences. “It’s funny; a lot of my favorite artists are Abstract Expressionists,” he says. “I love Cy Twombly [American, 1928-2011]. A lot of people don’t get him. But I think he’s fantastic, not only for his work but for how steady he was. You never read about Cy Twombly going off the rails. He moved to Rome, made consistent work, and I can really appreciate that.”

White’s long dedication to martial arts has also been influential. “I’ve been grappling for a long time,” he says. “I did judo for five years, and I’ve been doing jiujitsu for the past four.” In particular, he has derived inspiration from the literature surrounding martial arts. “I’ve been influenced by a lot of books, especially The Book of Five Rings by samurai Miyamoto Musashi and an essay titled ‘The Unfettered Mind’ by Zen master Takuan Soho. I got into these texts as an extension of my training, but I like them for the ways that Eastern philosophy speaks about the mind. One of the tenets is that you’re not dedicated to yourself but to the thing you’re pursuing itself. I try to apply that to my painting — it’s me taking my ego out of the way, honing my skill, and not getting in my own way when working.”

See more of Keinyo White’s work at keinyowhite.com.