"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: Award-winning artist Paul Kenneth has worked to perfect his unique style of painting and drawing for over 15 years. He has had solo exhibitions at Jackson Junge Gallery and 26Twenty Gallery and group exhibitions at LVL3 Gallery, Hyde Park Art Center, Krannert Art Museum, salonlb, and Zg Gallery. Paul received his BFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2009 and his MFA from The University of Illinois in 2021. He also completed a month-long residency at The Vermont Studio Center in 2019. Paul currently lives and works in Longmont, Colorado.

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.