American Coal Town represents and explores the complexities, connections, and cycles between landscape, Appalachian culture, protest, labor, industry, human rights, and social justice throughout the history of America and their correlation to the contemporary American experience today.Â
The Battle of Blair Mountain
Acrylic and crushed pigment on canvas, framed in cherry
3ft x 6ft
2022
The Battle of Blair Mountain speaks to the violence and violations of the civil rights experienced by American coal miners in the 1900s. The Battle of Blair Mountain references the labor uprising during the American Coal Wars, and the stride for equal liberties, unionization, and social justice throughout American history. Within the abstractions of the paintings, Kessler references physical landscape, abstracted dark spaces of the mountain interior, and explosion.
Can't Buy The Stars With Scrip
from American Coal Town Series
Triptych painting, Acrylic on canvas
116in x 40in
2023
From the series, American Coal Town, Can't Buy The Stars With Scrip is a triptych painting featuring abstract atmospheric imagery that references both the expansiveness of a night sky and an expression of the deep compressing darkness of a coal mine. Can't Buy The Stars With Scrip considers the contrast between the oppressive culture and physical space of a coal mine and the freeing boundlessness offered by the vastness and beauty of the night sky. The title references the oppressive practices of the use of scrip- a form of company-created currency used to pay the Appalachian coal miners.
Detail of center triptych panel from Can't Buy The Stars With Scrip
Detail of right triptych panel from Can't Buy The Stars With Scrip
Detail of left triptych panel from Can't Buy The Stars With Scrip
Deep Down In The Darkness, Sing Canary, Sing
from American Coal Town Series
Diptych painting
acrylic on canvas
