Kenneth Victor Young
Kenneth Victor Young (1933 - 2017) was born in Louisville, Kentucky and had a career that began in the sciences. After studying physics and earning his B.S. in Fine Art from the University of Louisville, where he met fellow student Sam Gilliam, he moved to Washington, D.C. in 1964 and began painting abstract forms with washed acrylics on unprimed canvas. He had a far-reaching career as an artist, teacher, and museum professional. Young taught at the Duke Ellington School and the Corcoran School of Art and had an illustrious 35-year career as an international exhibition designer for the Smithsonian Institution. His extensive travels helped inform his cosmic abstract style of painting.
A love for jazz influenced the movement and vitality of his work. His early paintings are distinguished by floating orb motifs, a fusion of brilliant colors held together in molecular suspension. Young described his artistic philosophy as “bringing order out of chaos.”
His paintings have been included in exhibitions at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Corcoran Gallery and the Washington Project for the Arts, and are in the collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC.