The Creative fire burns eternal
He demonstrated unusual artistic talents at an early age. He sold his first painting during adolescence. He excelled in creative pursuits as a teenager. He enrolled in four art classes during his junior and senior high school years and won or placed in a number of regional art competitions. He continually dreamed of being a real artist; that's what he wanted to be.
He failed his art classes, all of them. Later, he attended college as a 25 year old freshman with the intent of becoming an art professor. He maintained a high academic standard, learned many things, made countless friends, and enjoyed some of the greatest times of his life.
A year later, he dropped out of art school.
His mother says that when he was just 4, he set a trashcan ablaze in his bedroom. She sternly warned him to never play with fire. He didn't listen. Pete is now a full-time professional artist, and the only one in history to literally set his paintings on fire.
He also creates art on his barbeque grill.
Peter Kephart has never been a guy to do things like others do them. After art school, he spent 9 years in corporate life before embarking on a creative one, at the age of 28. He sometimes wore business suits with paint flecks on them, because often on returning home from work, he couldn't wait to change his clothes before painting.
While building his home, he bypassed the easy way of starting from scratch. Instead, he dismantled an antique building, moved it up a mountain in pieces, restored the original lumber by hand, and then clad the new structure he had built with the refinished vintage lumber.
Then he built a tree in his kitchen.
If what you want is uniqueness, you're at the right place. Peter Kephart embodies the idea of originality, his art even more so. He paints nature with the elements of its own creation, the same forces that forged our world. And his images are unlike anything you have ever seen. Each is one of a kind, and none can be repeated.
Just like Pete.
And he's not just an artist, either. Pete is a trained classical musician, though he's been out of practice for awhile. He is an excellent whistler, and can improvise a harmony to any song that he's hearing for the first time. He is skilled in many residential building trades, from foundations to finishing. He's a talented writer, a skilled and passionate fisherman, a hiker, a kayaker, a performer, a businessman, and a bit of a comedian in the right circumstances.
At times, he's been a fool and a failure; at others, a visionary and a victor. He's loved and lost, and been lost and found. He's made great mistakes in his life, which fortunately have been limited in number and scope. He's enjoyed great achievements and admirable successes, and faced career roadblocks, detours, standstills, and other frustrating diversions beyond counting. Through it all, his artistic drive has carried him along, keeping him buoyant when he felt like sinking.
In Pete Kephart the creative fire burns eternal. He has produced a few thousand artworks during his career. He expects to make thousands more before his internal flame burns out.
Kephart's Firepaintings are included in public, corporate, and numerous private art collections at home and abroad. Millions of people around the world have seen Pete's art through mass media exposure and on-site exhibits. He may very well be the most famous artist you've never heard of.