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art beat |
Renowned local artist Kevin McEvoy of Islip has spent countless hours at Cyrus: Chai & Coffee Company near the Bay Shore train station.
That’s where McEvoy met the soft-spoken coffeehouse barfly, as he describes him, Joshua Bellinger, an abstract artist from Bay Shore.
The two liked to talk art, but couldn’t be any different in that respect, considering McEvoy’s classical painting background.
“Josh worked with a permanent marker and sheets of Bristol paper, I worked with Italian brushes on linen; Joshua plumbed his imagination and flattened everything into rhythmic patterns, I observed the world around me and worked hard to depict dimension and volume,” McEvoy tells us.
“One day, I asked Joshua if I could paint his portrait, and to paint him in front of his own abstract work. Joshua was thrilled with the idea.”
check out the results:
The painting, once completed, was immediately accepted into the Long Island Museums exhibition in Stony Brook. No sooner was the painting off the walls of the Long Island Museum, than the piece was juried into the first round of the world wide painting competition, the BP Portrait Competition at the National Gallery in London.
Having shipped the painting over to London, after COVID the painting was immediately shipped back to NY. Back on Long Island, the painting had been juried into the Long Island Biennial Exhibition, where it now hangs at the Heckscher Museum in Huntington, until January 10th.
prior coverage:
and here’s a video:
