By Grace Allen

Art is a visual language, a way of communicating ideas or conveying emotions. For Ian Kabat, it’s also a response to an overstimulating and complicated world. 

 

Kabat, a Franklin-based artist, is showcasing his work this month in the newly refurbished Community Room at the Norfolk Public Library. His large, white-only oil portraits, with their photo-like quality, are impactful even before entering the room, beckoning the viewer in without the distraction of color.

“I want my work to give people a rest,” Kabat explained. “I hope they experience a sense of calm and a sense of wonder.”

Kabat says people are bombarded with image after image, video after video, and comment after comment, mostly because of social media. His work is an emotional response to that barrage of information everyone is exposed to on a daily basis. 

A graduate of the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Kabat was inspired by the Dutch Renaissance painters, especially Rembrandt. But he also found himself drawn to Asian art, appreciating the Zen-like simplicity. 

That tension has played out throughout Kabat’s art career. He’s painted multiple portraits with Rembrandt-like sensibilities, but he has also created sculpture and dabbled in abstract paintings.

It was about five years ago that Kabat’s work started to evolve to what he calls a simplistic classical style. Then the pandemic happened, and he was stuck in his studio, closed off from the world like everybody else. That weird time, he says, fueled a need for calmness in the midst of chaos. It also accelerated a desire to paint without color but keep the strong contrast of light and dark Rembrandt is known for. 

“Color is fantastic, don’t get me wrong,” Kabat said. “But it was something that I found was more complicated than it needed to be.” 

Kabat works mostly from photos, and his culturally diverse subjects represent ideas or events that strike a chord with him. His art helps him to fulfill the need to represent that person or people he’s read or heard about. 

His favored medium is oils, even though he currently eschews their richness of color, preferring white on black.

Asking an artist to pick a favorite piece might be compared to asking a mother to pick a favorite child, yet Kabat says “Dancer” is special to him. He painted it after going to see the Nutcracker with his wife, Linda, and it’s one of the few full-body paintings he’s done so far.

By day, Kabat is a creative director at Dell Technologies (he’s painted a portrait of the late Dick Egan, the co-founder of EMC, which later merged with Dell). Along with his wife, Kabat ran the Franklin Art Center for several years, and in 2014 was involved in making the Franklin Sculpture Park a reality.

After the Franklin Art Center closed, Kabat and his wife, an educator, started a non-profit called Give Kids the Arts, which collects and distributes art supplies and musical instruments to organizations and community groups working with low-income children. The arts, he believes, are a vital component of a healthy childhood.

“Kids are always on their screens,” said Kabat. “The arts are leaving the schools, and art classes—if they have them—are getting shorter while the classes are getting bigger. It’s becoming less and less a creative world and more of a watching world.”

Most artists will say they have an innate need to create, and in doing so to connect others to their art and its message. Kabat’s message shines in his display at the library. 

“I want viewers to realize that less is more,” he said. “I think of these works almost like a sketch in oils. You don’t need too much to get a lot out of it.”

For more information about Kabat’s work, upcoming exhibits, or to commission a piece, visit IanKabat.com. 

To learn more about Give Kids the Arts, visit www.givekidsthearts.org or follow the organization on Facebook or Instagram.