Remembering Kevin Grass

Hannah Smith — Tue, 25 Feb 2025 21:57:51 +0000

It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of Kevin Grass on February 5, 2025, at the age of 56.

An avid cyclist, Kevin was cycling to work to teach perspective to his drawing students when he and a truck collided. He was blocks away from the college he taught at.

Kevin Grass grew up in Ste. Genevieve, Missouri, a small river town about an hour Southeast of St. Louis. Since there were no art supply stores nearby, his father, who worked as a grocery store clerk, brought brown paper bags home for him to use as drawing paper. Using No. 2 pencils and ball-point pens, he worked obsessively without instruction to master representational drawing skills.

In high school, Kevin created a wide variety of commissioned works, ranging from portraits and landscapes to lettering for campaign signs and car decorations. One of the murals he assisted within his town still exists today.

After becoming valedictorian of Ste. Genevieve High School, Kevin began his formal art education at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. He started as an architecture student, but his obsession with painting was so strong that he changed his major. Kevin received his undergraduate degree in drawing and painting in 1990 from Washington University on a full academic scholarship.

At the University of Georgia, Kevin met his wife, Michaela Oberlaaender in a Northern Renaissance art class. Having an extensive impact on his life, that course introduced him to the narrative symbolism and the meticulous techniques of the Flemish masters that influenced his work.

Kevin began teaching art full-time at Gordon College in Georgia while also pursuing corporate art commissions and regional juried shows and had his first solo museum exhibition.

He then moved to Tampa Bay to teach at St. Petersburg College teaching full-time as an Associate Professor of Art.

Late in 2019, Kevin decided to work on using his art to make people smile and the Lame Ducks series was born. You can find out more here about Where Did the Ducks Come From?

Kevin exhibited his work at Redwood Art Group’s Art Fairs such as Red Dot Miami, Spectrum Miami, and Artexpo New York where his work left an invaluable impression on thousands of attendees.

“It is with great sorrow that we say goodbye to the best husband, father, artist, teacher, son, brother, uncle, and friend a person could hope to have.” – Kevin’s Wife, Michaela

Kevin’s kindness, creativity, and weonderful personality will be greatly missed. From all of us at Art Business News, we send our condolences to his friends, family, collectors, and students.

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[PLATFORM] AWARDS: THE RESULTS ARE IN

Art Business News — Wed, 03 May 2017 15:16:29 +0000

Last spring, Redwood Media Group announced its first-ever [PLATFORM] Artist of the Year contest, sponsored by Art Brand Studios, a comprehensive art publishing company with over 30 years’ experience in the industry. The awards contest, offering prizes totaling $375,000 in value, was created to find the next “it” artist, offering the winner a contract with Art Brand Studios, exhibition opportunities, career coaching, and more. Along with nine finalists and four special category winners in sculpture, glass, mixed media, and photography, a grand-prize winner was named in December of 2016: Kevin Grass.

“We created the [PLATFORM] Artist of the Year contest to empower talented artists and introduce their work to the world,” says Eric Smith, president and CEO of Redwood Media Group. “We had really wonderful artists submit their work, so it was a tough decision to make, and we are really excited to provide this opportunity to Kevin Grass, a very gifted artist.”

The entrants’ work was judged by a panel of esteemed art-industry insiders: Mary Ann Cohen, James Lambert, James Baird, and Smith. The panel considered originality, sense of composition, creativity, technical skill, use of materials and light, commercial appeal, and overall impact of the artwork when judging the work.

Revolution by Kevin Grass

ARTIST OF THE YEAR: KEVIN GRASS
Artist Kevin Grass was announced the winner of the [PLATFORM] Artist of the Year Awards and will receive prizes valued at $65,000, including a $10,000 cash advance against future royalties, a publishing and licensing contract with Art Brand Studios, and numerous exhibition opportunities at Redwood Media Group’s 2016–2017 shows.

“I feel very honored that I was chosen as the winner the first year of the [PLATFORM] Awards among all of the talented artists that entered,” said Grass. “I couldn’t be more excited for this opportunity and to see what comes next.”

Grass, a full-time Assistant Professor of Art at St. Petersburg College in Clearwater, Florida, paints representational landscape and surrealistic figure paintings. He has been interested in art since he was a young child and, while in high school, he spent time on a wide variety of commissioned works, ranging from portraits and landscapes to campaign signs and car decorations. He exhibits his work throughout the East and Southeast, including the Evan Lurie Gallery in Carmel, Indiana. Grass’s work has been purchased for museum, corporate, public, and private collections throughout the United States and in Europe.

Art Brand Studios is excited to work with Grass and thinks his work has tremendous appeal and opportunity. Art Brand Studios will be providing not only art publishing, but also collaboration with Grass, offering him a comprehensive set of tools from retail placement to marketing strategy, propelling his art, and building his brand and market reach in the art industry.

FINALISTS
Julie Schumer – Three Figure Study No. 10
Rae Broyles – Dreaming of Tibet
Sara Conca – Virtue
Flavio Galvan – Way Over Yonder
Jeremy Sicile-Kira – My Future Girlfriend
Veronica Leiton – Invisible Realities
David Gonzales – Primal
Leon Oks – Anticipation
Sergio Valenzuela – Giros

SPECIAL CATEGORY WINNERS
Sculpture:
Jean-Jacques Porret – Pretense
Steven Lustig – Stacked Torso

Photography:
George Saitas – Nuclear
Charleen Baugh – Multicolored Reflections

Mixed Media:
Mary Hong – Abstract in Blue
Beth Goldberg – Keeping the Beat

Glass:
Alexis Silk – Electric Suspense
Elizabeth Dunlop – Turquoise Totem II

Save

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Remembering Kevin Grass

[PLATFORM] AWARDS: THE RESULTS ARE IN