“Yeah, I'm the color guy,” says Kim Krause, standing before a brilliant cerulean blue canvas of layered paint. He is talking about his solo show at the Linda Schwartz Gallery, which opened Friday. On display are nine of his most recent paintings, large canvases of saturated colors and obscured markings and the now ubiquitous loops that define his work.

Kim Krause in his Clifton-area studio with two of his recent works, 'Edge' and 'Phoenix.' (Michael E. Keating photos) | ZOOM |

        A compelling addition to the show, a catalog of poems paired with the paintings, has been published to annotate the work. These emotional responses, rather than scholarly descriptions, add another dimension to the exhibition.

        Inspired by a springtime excursion to Greece, the paintings chronicle his experience.

        “Spetses,” he says, evokes walks with wine glass in hand on the cliffs near a rented home. The fine brush work in yellow represents the bougainvillea blossoms falling on his shoulders as he wanders the coast. The layers of blue are the Aegean Sea, the rubbed out black markings a dead rat that fell from a tree.

        “My experience in Greece was profound,” he says. “It influenced me to paint more colorfully. I learned the paintings have to be connected to you, but they don't have to be about anything.”

        But the canvases are about everything.

ON 'MARMARA'

Cincinnati poet Timothy Riordan wrote of “Marmara”: Quick the thrust of bristles to cover up, rub out, subdue into the background barely noticeable as scar, trace, or shade-shape cooled off, so light can come forward as the light of Greece upon the sea — crackling, fracturing particles, shadows behind waves, ripples adrift, molecules as drops of water rolling & breaking, now a wave, now a particle. His mind tormented by the inimitable, the irritating reminder he really has been to that sea as deep as Crete insinuating itself

        “Edge” represents the cliffs near another rented home, a treacherous trail, the creatures of the sea and the places where all things meet.

        “It's a combination of exhilaration and danger with the astonishing beauty of land meeting sea,” says Mr. Krause, chairman of the Department of Fine Arts at the Art Academy of Cincinnati, where he has taught for 16 years.

        “It was all about these edges: land meets sea, sea meets sky, people meet the end of rocks. And how they all come together. There is, of course, the metaphor of trying to get to the edge of a painting and trying to place yourself on that edge.”

        A chronic journal keeper, Mr. Krause records his experiences and later reconstructs them in paint. The abstract renderings may have less meaning to the viewer, but their attempt to explore emotional responses to events of the day are clear. This is what Mr. Krause is most interested in: capturing the feeling of an experience and what the memory of that experience feels like.

        “In order to get the paintings into another place, I was layering up different kinds of memories, conflicting memories,” Mr. Krause explains. “The loops are in opposition and become a dance in composition. It's like with"Edge,' opposing forces made visual.”

        Mr. Krause says he is driven to apply multiple layers of paint because it is difficult and he cannot necessarily predict how the paintings will turn out.

        “It comes out of a sense of wanting to get it right,” he explains. “There are stages in the painting where absolutely nothing is happening. They're just dead and you really don't want anyone to see them and you hope you can scrape it off quickly in case the waterman comes in. Luckily, I have a blind cat.”

        The sentiments are familiar to anyone who has cowered before a canvas or the insult of a blank page. Perhaps it is Mr. Krause's ability to express the angst that inspired the collaboration on the atypical catalog.

IF YOU GO

What: Kim Krause Greek Variations   When: 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesday-Friday, 10 a.m.- 4 p.m. Saturday through Feb. 16   Where: Linda Schwartz Gallery, 315 W. Fourth St., downtown   Information: 241-4202

        Mr. Krause's intent to inform the paintings in a new way came naturally; he had studied with poets in graduate school and last year while working as an associate artist at the Atlantic Center for the Arts in New Smyrna Beach, Fla.

        “I think of the paintings as visual poetry,” he says. “I went searching for the most interesting poets and writers I could find. I selected four poets I had worked with in Florida and the other five were local acquaintences.”

        He sent the nine poets pages from his journals. “Some poets never saw the paintings in person,” Mr. Krause says. Cincinnati poet “Timothy Riordan came to my studio to read his poem; he said I had to hear it from his lips. I had tears in my eyes when he finished.”

        When Mr. Riordan visited the studio to see the paintings, he found “energy was everywhere.”

        “The poem says it all,” Mr. Riordan explains. “It's about energy and excitement and how . . . memories get integrated into the things we know and take on new forms. It's about the creative process; The role of the aritst is to transform experience in ways nothing else can.”

        What most surprised Mr. Krause was that every person he asked “jumped at the opportunity, and I was doubly honored when I received the pieces and read the quality.”

        The color abstracts and the colorful language is a striking combination that increases the intensity of an already strong sensory experience.

        “The catalog becomes something other than itself,” adds Mr. Krause. “It is an event. I wanted the catalog to have life beyond the exhibition.”

        Contact Marilyn Bauer at 768-8521; fax: 768-8330; e-mail mbauer@enquirer.com.

        Read about Marilyn Bauer, the Enquirer's new visual arts reporter, at Cincinnati.com

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