"Engaging with Paul's work is like deciding to go to a theatre, sit down, suspend, and stay; you're either down for the ride, or you're not. Those who decide to allow his work to take the reins enter a world of sensations that squish, flutter, tempt, resist, grip, and surrender the eye across, and beyond the canvas- but to where? Paul doesn't want to know. It's up to you to take his distance as a modification or an occasion to ramble." - Emmaly Crimmel

About: Paul Kenneth is a Colorado-based artist whose material explorations combine drawing, painting, and sculpture. His unique approach to figuration is developed through curiosity and thoughtful play. Paul’s artwork has been featured in solo exhibitions at the University of Colorado Colorado Springs GOCA Project Space and Jackson Junge Gallery, along with recent group exhibitions at Emmanuel Gallery, Arvada Center for the Arts, Bell Projects, DATELINE, Lakewood Cultural Center, and Philip J. Steele Gallery.

Paul earned his Bachelor of Fine Arts from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2009 and completed his Master of Fine Arts at The University of Illinois in 2021. In 2019, he undertook a month-long residency at The Vermont Studio Center.

Currently residing in Longmont, with artist partner Lara Mann, Paul shares his passion and knowledge for the arts teaching at the University of Colorado Boulder and Rocky Mountain College of Art + Design.

Statement: My artistic exploration focuses on the theatrical performance of mark-making. Quick gestural marks dance around intricately rendered representations. Sweeping brushstrokes become animated and develop personalities through delicately drawn graphite outlines. Upon first glance, the figurative subjects in my work appear as the leading roles with the marks and materials playing the rest of the cast. Time spent with the work will reveal the pictorial hierarchy turned on its head. The figures begin to undulate in and out of abstraction as the attention to the marks takes center stage. The resulting image hovers in playful flux between abstraction and realism.