Simon Kenny
As accolades go, receiving one from the planet’s leading Theoretical Physicist, Stephen Hawking is never really going to be surpassed. We mean, where does a critically acclaimed contemporary fine artist go from there, short of HRH the Queen maybe? Or the Pope, perhaps? Well, that’s precisely the level of ability rubber-stamping that generally highly praised art exponent, Simon Kenny is used to soaking up, courtesy of the Hawking’s career-defining response to one compositional piece he witnessed. Often referred to as either a ‘radical impressionist’ or a ‘radical Turner’ (or indeed, someone who habitually creates ‘lyrical abstractions’), Hawking famously described one of Kenny’s visual masterpieces as; “It looks like everything about space I cannot explain”. So, this begs the eternal question, ‘where did it go so right?’ for the much-talked about Kenny; which is inevitably where we say our piece.
Born in Dublin in 1976, Kenny fell in love with art at a seemingly young age; which was also empowered further by being blessed with a natural inquisitiveness to the world around him. Having said that, the resultant compositional studies Kenny went on to manifest when he was older are not what you might call ‘site specific’, instead illustratively enveloping the great unseen and then some. Kenny himself lends a defter touch to the explanation of things by stressing that his underlying objective is for the individual viewer to connect personally with each pictorial, by way of being reminded of a place they once knew (or had visited), care of an unexpected moment of emotional fusion. There’s no denying that the subsequent graphic releases Kenny’s imagined, crafted and presented to his adoring audience – and seasoned collectors and art critics to boot – comprise of dramatic, atmospheric and overwhelmingly captivating scenery.
In terms of his preferred materials and methods, Kenny’s visions are cemented on his chosen canvases via brush and palette knife, together with subtle under painting techniques and the adoption of graduating alterations in the colours frequented and ultimately laid down. These stunning, fundamentally abstract labours of love certainly draw the crowds as touched on above, and today Kenny’s client base is dotted far and wide. What’s more, his works feature prominently in the collections of both private and corporate clients, with particular interest in his work shown in America amongst other places. When you’re taking the aforementioned Hawking out of the equation, of course.
We guess the final word on the subject of Simon Kenny should fall to the hugely exciting artist himself though, and hence why we finish his bite-size bio on a more personal note. In conversation about his tried and tested approach to his creative work and affording us an insight into the thought process behind his each and every new reveal, Kenny says; “My personality is a big part of what I paint. I do become incredibly emotionally connected to my work, almost treating it as though it’s a living thing. My mood plays a part in the colours I choose, or the way I use my brushes and knives, and it can certainly affect direction of the work; that’s what makes it so special to me.”
