Kevin Beers is a Monhegan artist whose reputation is rapidly growing. He has painted on Monhegan for over 15 years and is known for capturing its unique light in his work.

Kevin grew up in the Hudson Valley graduated from the State
University of New York at New Paltz and then studied at the Art Students League of New York. He seeks to capture the essence of whatever subject resonates for him. When a subject really moves him, the act of painting it is an act of experiencing that subject to the fullest much the way you would savor a glass of wine by first smelling it and looking at it and then rolling it around in your mouth.

In a technical sense that is done with light, color, and  the patterns they make. Hopper said it most simply- "All I ever tried to do was paint the light on the side of a house". Also there is always some one thing that motivates him often something incidental which no one else may ever notice. In one case the subject was a yellow
truck and I was fascinated by what colors the yellow becomes when it's in the light or in shadow. It's not a yellow that's in shadow but rather a group of colors from yellow to olive green. In the case of this church it is the unusual architecture of the church and it's bleached whiteness against a cobalt blue sky. And he like the simple frontal view. Simple and rather stark, it seems to him to be a perfect sort of expression of New England personality and values.

The painting is a 9X12 oil on board. The subject is the Finnish Church on Route 131 going down to Port Clyde. Andrew Wyeth has painted this church.