statement

My practice is fundamentally rooted in abstraction that derives overtly and obliquely from nature, landscape, geometry (sacred and mundane), architecture, and time as record through personal experience.

I work primarily on paper. Having formerly used pastel, charcoal, and intaglio printmaking media, I have concentrated the last thirty years painting with watercolor.

My watercolor technique is basically reductive. Dark transparent washes applied over lighter/bright more opaque color are followed by “lifting” the darker pigments with water. I quite literally paint with water.

The central figure in the series, all the hours and Revolver (2000-2020), a few seconds of now (2021-2022), and LOVE is all you need (2023-ongoing) is the shape of a vintage General Electric kitchen clock that is a stylized twelve petal/hour “flower”. I populate inside and outside the flower form with silhouettes of found and purchased objects such as discarded aluminum can pull tabs, spent cap gun shot-rings, toy bubble wands, bracelet/key chain charms and typographic letter fonts. In the LOVE is all you need series, I use a found plastic charm of the iconic Robert Indiana stacked tilted arrangement of the word LOVE. To further enhance the theme of love, I incorporate various romantic and conjugal related love symbols/ideograms such as hearts, circles, plus signs, overlapping forms, flowers, the letters X and O, etc.

Studio:

e: mk@marykenealystudio.com