"Shock and Awe" Painting

Kenneth has made comparisons between his new paintings and 1980's "MTV," where the drama and pulsing, seductive intensity of those early music videos captivated a generation. The challenge of creating depth, resonance, and visual interest in his paintings has led him into a new sort of figurative abstraction. Quirky figures appropriated from Rembrandt and Tiepolo paintings are shoved into swirling, glowing spaces that reinterpret their original effect. Intense color fields, visceral mark-making and fragmented spaces characterize his work, and have given him an aesthetic foundation for each series of paintings.

Kenneth has exhibited work in Hamburg, Germany and nationally in NYC (Parallax and ArtExpo fairs), with additional solo exhibitions in a range of venues, including Amarillo, TX, Edinboro, PA, and Hastings, NE. He has also curated two exhibitions on abstract painting, REVERB and REVERB II at the University of Northern Iowa and Bowling Green State University (respectively) in the past five years as a way of promoting painting to regional and academic audiences. He has enjoyed the writing/dialogue that accompanies abstraction as it requires some explanation to the contemporary viewer and, ultimately, helps to increase appreciation of painting.

Recently he was awarded a one-month artist residency at GlogauAIR in Berlin, Germany, where he found inspiration and connection amongst the international artist community there. His newest paintings reveal the influence of that experience.