Kevin Stock knows Central Illinois: He was born in Jacksonville and grew up in Woodson before graduating from Jacksonville High School in 1987.

The retired Marine veteran now works as a civilian employee of the US Department of Defense and is diving headfirst into art.

“The thing about the art – I was doing little drawings,” Stock said, adding that it was “not really art” but more of a pastime, doodling the landscape around him. “Corn and farm stuff, tractors, combines.”

The pandemic changed that. Bored of “doing nothing all the time,” Stock decided to follow the example of Matt Jagitsch, a friend who also graduated from JHS and returned to art when the pandemic freed him up from his non-art-related job.

“I thought, ‘I’ll give it a try,'” Stock said. “But I didn’t have any art supplies.”

Instead, Stock used a virtual reality headset and an art app to create digital paintings.

“You stand there, you have an easel, you have a paintbrush,” Stock said of the app, noting that the virtual reality is very similar to actually painting with oil paints and on a canvas.

Although Stock had always been artistically active, he tended to take the form of poems that were published in poetry collections, he said.

Painting – even digitally – was a completely different matter.

“The first things weren’t that great,” said Stock. “I don’t know where that came from. I had never painted before. I’d never done anything like that before.”

He knew he wasn’t interested in digital art as something “where you type something into a search engine and it spits something out,” he said. “I wanted it to look like traditional painting.”

Many digital artworks have a smooth surface and tend toward the anime style, including the digital art his teenagers created, Stock said.

“I think that’s why I wanted it to look more traditional than the anime style,” he said. “In anime, you don’t see piles of paint and brush strokes.”

Therefore, Stock’s art is characterized by contemporary themes and a modern flair, but at the same time has the feel of traditional oil paintings.

The subjects range from portraits of people he has met to landscapes he has seen during his world travels with the Navy. A series of red balloons has been an unexpected success, he said.

The famous street artist Banksy was the inspiration for the first one.

“He did something on a wall, a girl holding a red balloon in the shape of a heart,” Stock said. “I thought that was cool.”

Stock then created his own painting, inspired by the Banksy painting. It touched the mourners, perhaps because balloons are sometimes used at funerals as a sign of remembrance or respect, he said.

“With all my art … I never imagined that these would be the ones that would resonate with people,” he said. “You can’t intentionally create a hit.”

The app Stock uses lets him choose what kind of brush to use (if he uses a brush at all; palette knives are among the options available) and whether he uses canvas or another kind of paper.

He treats his works like real oil paintings on canvas.

“I don’t erase anything,” he said. “I don’t hit the back button. Any mistakes I make, I correct with more color.”

He also mixes his own colors within the app to get exactly the colors he wants.

“I’m trying new things with my last two or three (paintings) where I’m using both (brush and palette knife) to get different looks,” he said. “I’m trying to look as traditional as possible. I just want to learn new ways of doing things, different looks.”

“How you start painting probably doesn’t determine how you end up painting.”

Stock is the first to say that he is still trying to develop his own recognizable style and is learning as he goes, but after just a few years his art has found an audience.

In addition to selling individual pieces through people who see his work online and contact him, some of his works – along with works by abstract artist Kent Broadbent – are on display at the NCI ARTworks gallery in Peru, northeast of Peoria, through August 30.

NCIA is an arts agency in LaSalle, Bureau and Putnam counties that advocates for public art installations and helps raise funds for large-scale murals and mosaics, among other things, said Julia Messina, the agency’s executive director.

Stock’s friend Jagitsch, who exhibited at the NCIA gallery in 2022, also runs a website for emerging artists, Messina said, noting that Stock got on the NCIA’s radar through that site.

“Not only does he do digital art, but he also paints digitally with oil,” Messina said. “… It’s a whole new kind of art.”

Despite his brief experience in the medium, Stock’s art is worth attention, Messina said.

“We like to champion and promote some of the best artists in their genre,” she said. “We consider him to be one of the best artists in his genre, which is a new genre.”

The exhibition features prints of Stock’s works – some framed, some not; some on paper, some on canvas. One work is printed on metal. All are printed with museum-quality inks and materials, Stock said.

“Stock and Broadbent’s styles are completely different, but the colors they chose from their portfolios complement each other very well,” Messina said. “People who like abstract art may not know anything about digital art.”

Bringing the two together for a show offers both the chance to expand their audience, she said.

And although Stock admits he has never done a painting using oils on canvas, he hasn’t ruled it out — maybe when his children graduate from college, he says.

“It’s quite possible that you see a canvas and me standing there painting something,” he said.

The NCI Artworks gallery is open Monday, Wednesday, and Friday from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. and can be visited by appointment by calling 815-866-5167 or emailing [email protected]. Admission is free.