Daniel Kanow hopes to bring a little of Colorado’s scenic outdoors into the Olio restaurant and gallery in Mancos.
The Telluride painter and sculptor helped install several of his works at Olio on Sunday and will appear at an artist reception on Saturday. His paintings and bronze sculptures will be on display in the main dining area of the restaurant through Oct. 7. In addition to producing art at his studio in Telluride, Kanow is an art teacher and a master of fine arts candidate at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco.
Most of the works in the new Olio show are colorful mountain landscapes painted in an expressionistic style with a thick, layered texture. Kanow said they’re designed to evoke the feelings of being outside in the mountains, which is where he prefers to paint. His work tends to look abstract, he said, because he wants to portray an emotion more than an object or scene.
“I get inspired by emotional energy,” he said. “I’m wanting to show that there are imperfections, that there’s chaos that can be worked through to create beauty.”
The paintings in the Olio show range from small landscapes to an eight-canvas painting that will cover a wall. Most are fairly new, and one painting was still wet when it was installed on Sunday. They all share a similar textured painting style, Kanow said. But he said his favorite work on display is the only figurative painting, which shows a human form confronting a bear on a mountaintop.
“It’s kind of like a self-portrait,” he said. “I see myself as the bear, and the bear is me.”
A different artist’s work is displayed in the gallery every two months. Rena Wilson, president of the Mancos Creative District, said she chose Kanow for the latest show because she found his paintings exciting and thought they would resonate with the mountain-loving Mancos population.
“You don’t see a lot of that type of painting, with the colors, the texture,” she said. “It’s a show you don’t want to miss.”
Kanow said he hoped the show would help viewers feel “a personal connection” to the landscapes depicted. This will be his first Olio show, and he said he thought the restaurant would be the perfect venue to display his work.
The artist reception will start at 4 p.m. on Saturday. It is free and open to the public.
