Urban Reflection by Kevin Kluever

Framed original acrylic painting on panel.

Image size: approximately 19.5" x 15.5"

Frame size: approximately 26.25" x 22.25"

Handmade by Kevin Kluever of Minnetrista, Minnesota.

Kevin Kluever (pronounced "cleaver") is originally from Eldridge, Iowa and currently resides in Minnetrista, MN.

Kevin is a painter and muralist (having created more than fifty murals, both indoor and outdoor), which can be found throughout the West Hennepin, Minnesota area, especially Maple Plain.

In 2003, Kluever began showing his original artwork, winning awards for excellence at the Hopkins Center for the Arts and in Maple Grove. But a turning point in his career came in 2007, when Thom Flug, the director of Mound's Threshold Arts Center, asked Kluever to paint a mural for him. Kluever's workload snowballed from there; murals in Excelsior and Long Lake followed. "And Maple Plain has been quite fruitful for me," Kluever says.

Maple Plain, a town of 2,000 people, is situated on a curvy rise of Highway 12 where the marshy western edge of Hennepin County begins its gentle cross-dissolve into the rolling hills of central Minnesota. "It has one foot in the rural and one foot in the suburban," says Melanie DeLuca. "People who live in Maple Plain love that."

Kevin teaches art to students of all ages at the Minnetonka Center for the Arts in Minnesota.  He learned to paint the way he likes to teach it: by studying the masters.

"I'm completely self-taught," he says. "It took a lot of practice, and the learning part of painting came from copying painters and paintings that I liked."

Kluever counts Regionalist Grant Wood, Tonalist George Inness, Realist Edward Hopper, and Impressionists Camille Pissarro and Alfred Sisley among his influences. "I would try to figure out not so much how they did things but why they did things as far as colors and texture and placement and balance," Kluever says. "My own style came out of combining those influences and my ability."

The 1893 converted schoolhouse that Kluever lives in with his family -- and in which he has his studio -- is nestled in the Minnetrista countryside. Having grown up on an Iowa dairy farm, Kluever finds the rural Midwestern landscape inspiring. "It's in my blood," he says. "The color draws me, the plays of light and shadow -- and I love the sky, the way it looks late in the day."

Find more of Kevin's work here.