Kev Gill, Artist and architect

Kev, an Oakland native, Cal alum, and licensed architect, has been inventing worlds with color since he could hold a pencil. As a child inspired by comic books and Star Trek, he once filled page after page with whimsical, vibrant characters (like the one seen here, drawn at age 10)—early hints of the bold, layered compositions that now define his paintings

Kev is a restless synthesizer of worlds. You feel the travels, the schooling, the Bay Area polyphony in every mark—like someone trying to hold a dozen voices in one breath. He’s drunk on color: bright, jubilant, almost singing. Pattern too—those intricate, jittery grids that start polite and then mutiny, like graffiti crashing a Renaissance chapel. Sometimes they hold; sometimes they break loose. Either way, they’re alive and kicking.

Kev doesn’t make pictures; he choreographs an experience. You start wide, then dive into the micro, then rocket back out. Whole, then shard. Far, then in-your-face. It’s a dance. It’s hypnosis. It’s the kind of back-and-forth that feels like jazz—structured but wild, improvised but inevitable. And if, in that rhythm, you find yourself lulled, almost seduced into calm—maybe even a flicker of grace—well, that’s Kev’s quiet flex. That’s the work doing its work, like it knows it’s got you.

Kev works like a fearless tinkerer, convinced that art begins in experimentation and thrives in play. His pieces carry the bones of architecture—structural, deliberate—even as they burst with unruly color and pattern. He stacks and layers like a builder obsessed with rhythm, each mark locking into the next. A city of color under construction. He uses acrylic for its stubbornness, because it won’t blend without a fight. That resistance becomes the point: it forces Kev to stack, scrape, and carve until the surface buzzes with energy, a constructed landscape where structure and wildness keep each other honest.