Light Space & Time Online Art Gallery is extremely pleased to announce that Paul Kenens has been named as the Gallery’s new featured artist and he will now be promoted by the gallery for the next 14 days in the gallery’s Artist Showcase.
Paul is an internationally acclaimed award-winning artist based in Belgium. Paul was selected as 1 of the top twelve finalists in the gallery’s 23rd Solo Art Exhibition Series. The placement in this competition qualified his art to be showcased in this feature.
Paul’s Artist Showcase feature will be promoted to over 350+ major news outlets, with inclusion on Google News & Bing News. In addition, the gallery will also be featuring and promoting his artwork in the gallery’s various social media networks for further exposure.
Below are Paul’s Artist Biography, Artist Statement and 5 artworks that were submitted to this competition.
Artist Biography
Paul Kenens was born in Brussels (1947), the eldest of six children, without a father. As a 14-year-old and the breadwinner of the family, he found work in a printing house. Updated to a color mixer and offset printer for luxury printing, at the time a specialized craft, he discovered his sense of composition and color. Thirteen years later he left the printing house for a year, but never returned. He no longer wanted to depend on third parties and her started acting. In the same period, he discovered the ceramic craft.
Paul Kenens is passionate about this two disciplines, resulting in two parallel careers. As an independent actor in film, TV and theater, he worked in international theater. As a ceramist, he specialized in color glazes, designed decorations and tile panels, copied old Art Nouveaux panels, made ceramic architectural ceramics for protected monuments and performed artistic ceramics commissions for other artists and architects.
In 2010 he decided to paint and enrolled in the academy. Unaware of the gift or experience gained in painting with ceramic glazes, whose final color is not immediately visible, oil painting is one Revelation: "I can see right now that I do," he says.
He sold the ceramic workshop, stopped acting and devoted himself entirely to the painting. In the academy he was soon given the name of an outsider the passion and use of a detailed painting style. He commutes daily between academy and his own studio. In between he follows a Masterclass at the Brazilian hyperrealist Omar Ortiz
Artist Statement
My work starts with photos of a fixed fashion model and I take a few hundred photos per photo session. Different photos are edited and adapted until a certain image can no longer be recognized. The chaos in the head must be given a direction, the reminiscences that are attached to it at that moment and the intimate feelings that it arouses channeled. Multiple versions are made in an atmosphere of excitement. During the preparation, uncertainty about the future painted version flashes in all directions. One must first fall a little in love with the subject in order to paint.
I paint the first layer as detailed as possible, as if I want to finish the painting in one layer. Then I paint over the entire canvas in the same way. Shapes and colors are adjusted. I like saturated canvases without painting pasty. They bring depth to the color.
Although the starting point is photographic material, it is always a challenge to distinguish between photorealism and a painted image. Each painting is an attempt to increase the distance between the two. The whole of my work is not sterile but emotional, it shows what moves me. I view the painted canvas more critically, each time from a different state of mind or point of view, with correction as a result.
My titles sometimes raise questions, make the viewer think, it gives the viewer the opportunity to fill in their own interpretation. In the end it comes down to the fact that I partly reveal the inner through the choice made.
Paul’s website is www.paulkenens.be.
Click the Thumbnail to See the Artwork in a Lightbox
