Art: The Art of Rachel Kice

Paint by music

By F. Andrew Taylor

The problem with performance art, at least from a financial standpoint, is that once the performance is done, there's no art to sell. There are exceptions, of course, but for the most part you're left with disturbing images and staple-ridden lunch meat. Rachel Kice straddles the worlds of traditional art and performance art, which isn't easy, particularly while wearing heels and a cocktail dress.

What Kice does is set up her easel on stage, usually at country-western shows, and paints to the music. Surely she is not the first to do this, but she will no doubt be more successful than those who have gone before her. She brings a lot of rock show flash to what has previously been an experimental novelty. For instance, the gone-but-almost-completely-forgotten show at New York-New York, Madhattan, featured a five-minute shtick with a painter. He came out in paint-spattered coveralls and did an intensely colored painting that appeared to be abstract until the last few seconds when he turned it over, revealing a day-glo Statue of Liberty.

Kice doesn't rely on this sort of birthday party magician's trick in her work. She paints quickly in acrylics and eschews the traditional lumpy overalls for a more alluring outfit. (I can imagine a sea of cowboy hats tilting to the side as she crouches down to paint the low end of the painting.) At the opening, she didn't play the aloof and impossibly deep and tortured soul. She was more the radiant musician, high from the roar of the crowd and the adulation of her fans. In addition to her paintings, the gallery was festooned with her paint-spattered dresses, which I'm sure she can sell for a pretty penny. She had the fortune and skill to be featured prominently in the video for Big and Rich's "Save a Horse, Ride a Cowboy." She has managed to blur the line between artist and star.

As for the art itself, eh, it could be worse. She manages to use a wider and more interesting range of colors than one would expect from quickly executed acrylics. Snarkier voices than mine have claimed that cubism died with Picasso, and probably long before that. I'm not willing to make such a sweeping condemnation of cubism, but it's undeniable that Pablo set a bar that's hard to surpass. Will Kice expand the medium and bring it to new heights? It seems unlikely. Will she be big and rich beyond the dreams of the average struggling Van Gogh? My money's riding on the lady.