Kevin Maringer

BIOGRAPHY

I am an artist printmaker based in Edinburgh, Scotland. My career as an artist has taken a non-traditional route. Although highly creative as a child growing up in a multicultural family between Germany and England, my formal academic education has been in the sciences, and I still work full-time leading a research laboratory in the field of global public health. I have honed my artistic skills and creative vision through life drawing classes, community printshops and workshops with internationally leading artists and master printers. I have travelled extensively and called many countries and places home, and this experience of living between cultures has a strong influence on my work. I have exhibited nationally in curated gallery shows in London, Edinburgh and across the UK, including as part of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival programme, and have won regional awards for my work. I am a member of Edinburgh Printmakers where I create my stone lithographs, while my relief prints are printed in my home studio in the heart of Edinburgh.

Artist statement

My work explores identity, the human experience and the ways in which we relate to each other. I am especially drawn to the spaces we inhabit between multiple lived realities, and how we resolve dual identities to present a curated version of ourselves. Much of my recent work has focussed on an exploration of masks and the tension between our inner self and the idealised version of ourselves that we project to the world. My work is informed by my lived experience as a queer nonbinary neurodivergent person with a multi-national heritage and upbringing, my training as a scientist, and my time spent living in the multicultural melting pots London and New York. I primarily work in relief printing (woodcut and mokuhanga) and lithography (using stone and wood as substrates). My work strives to incite reflection on our shared humanity and joint origin in nature through the exploration of natural materials, textures and pigments. I am particularly drawn to pigments like rust and coal that undergo transformations and exist in multiple states, representing the multiple identities that coexist within us. I count Tracey Emin, Oswaldo Guayasamín, Bridget Riley, Evelyne Axell and Matsubara Naoko among my influences.