Kevin Tice

Tice began drawing very young, starting with horses, deer, and trees, and cartoons doodles to entertain his friends. Blessed with encouragement from his parents and art teachers at school, he was successful in various art competitions as a youngster. Kevin Tice’s early art consisted of pencil drawings and painting in acrylics during his high school years, and while he did take some art courses in college, he considers himself primarily self-taught under the guidance of many great teachers and mentors.

Today, after a career in law enforcement while raising a family, Kevin Tice gets artistic inspiration from all over, but most especially from the great outdoors. These moments of inspiration typically come from landscapes, seascapes, and dramatic skies, but his eye is always looking for interesting shapes, potential compositions, and colors.  He paints en plein air and makes photographs of outdoor scenes for reference. These photos will go on to inform his process for composition once he is back in the studio. Like many Americans, Tice is attracted to national parks, but it’s often the hidden locations he discovers while roaming the western portions of the U.S. that make his canvases shine so spectacularly.

In seeking out these gems adjacent to more obvious sources of landscape beauty, Tice is partaking in a process that one of his favorite artists, Clyde Aspevig, calls “land snorkeling.” While exploring, Tice will create thumbnail sketches or small paintings that help him work through design and composition ideas that support a painting’s intent. Once he is sure of an idea for creation, Tice will complete the drawing on a linen panel, and when he is happy with the drawing of lines and shapes, he typically completes an underpainting or simply tone the canvas so that he is not painting on a stark white surface.

While he paints all prima, more often than not Tice will block in the design and gradually layer in the painting, being conscious of value relationships, color, and edges, sometimes adding color glazes in areas to accomplish a desired effect. This fine-tuned attention to detail means being attentive to the need for color shifts and temperature changes in color to read well.  He will look at the art sometimes for days as he works through problems, finding this process of artistic problem-solving to create sublime paintings that collectors love.

Accomplishments

Kevin Tice enjoyed a three-month solo show at Park West Gallery in Las Vegas in early 2024, and his first Park West event was a rousing success and sell out aboard an Alaskan Cruise.