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 award-winning artist based in Belgium. Paul was selected as 1 of the top twelve finalists in the gallery’s 20th 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 her artwork in the gallery’s various social media networks for further exposure.

Below are Paul’s Artist Biography, Artist Statement and 5 images that were submitted to this competition.

Artist Biography:

Paul Kenens was born in Brussels (1947) as the eldest of six children, a childhood without a father. The lack of money soon forced him to be self-sufficient. As a 14-year-old and the family's breadwinner, he found work in a printing company. He worked up to a color mixer and offset printer for luxury printing, which was still a specialized craft at the time, and he discovered his sense of composition and color. Thirteen years later, he left the print shop. He no longer wanted to be dependent on third parties and started acting. In the same period, he discovered the art of ceramics.

Paul is passionate about these two disciplines, which has resulted in two parallel careers. As an independent actor in film, TV and theater, he made international theater independently. 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 carried out artistic ceramic commissions for other artists. Paul always immersed himself in the subject matter, searched for the core of the craft and its characteristics and followed his own path in it.

In 2010, he decided to study painting and immediately began painting with ceramic glazes, the final color of which cannot be seen immediately. It was a revelation. He sold the ceramics studio, stopped acting and threw himself completely into painting. During this time, he also takes a Master class with the Brazilian Hyperrealist Omar Ortiz.

Paul has exhibited in Paris (Hilton), The Hague (Gallery Heyningen - Painting of the Year 2019) Sterckshof Castle in Deurne, Cortewalle Castle in Beervelde, Royal Greenhouses Van Bouchout Castle in Laken, BOZAR Brussels, etc. Galerie NOVIA in Doorn (N) etc. He participated in art fairs ADAF (Annual Art Fair in Amsterdam, BAF (Brabant Art Fair in Breda) Lifestyle Fair in Oud Turnhout etc. (continued: see CV) and has been nominated numerous times.

Artist Statement:

My subjects come from the immediate environment: it concerns people. If it is not myself, they are children or women where I notice in a split second a movement, an attitude or trait that arouses a thought that goes beyond the image (or goes against it). A personal detail that lingers in the memory. An image that establishes itself and grows in its emotionality (one has to fall in love with your subject, even if it is a banal thing like a child's toy or a piece of clothing).

My work regularly starts with photos of a fixed photo model. I take a few hundred photos that are stored on a PC. They are viewed and reviewed several times, each time creating new thoughts. The images must "ripen". After that, various photos are edited and adjusted until a certain image cannot be recognized. Multiple versions are made in an atmosphere of excitement. During the preparation, uncertainty about the future painted version flashes in all directions. The state of mind, the emotional attitude, determines the direction in which the image takes. Sometimes the image itself indicates a natural direction, or is this even the result of the interpreter's character?

I paint the underlay as detailed as possible, as if I want to finish the canvas. Then I repaint the entire painting, adjusting shapes and colors. I like saturated canvases without pasty painting. They bring depth to the color. Until the provisional end, I bring details, highlights and I emphatically paint over any points of attention.

Although the starting point is photo material, it is always a challenge to make a difference between photo-realism and painted image during the execution. Each painting is an attempt to increase the distance between the two and perhaps with the aim of painting beyond realism. With a painted image, you bring something else that you don't see on a photo. The whole of my work is not sterile but emotional; it shows what moves me. Over time, I view the painted canvas more critically and each time from a different state of mind or point of view, with corrections as a result. Sometimes an element is added months later that breaks the ambiguity or shifts the focus.

Some works are poetic, sensual. Others arouse curiosity through the use of unexpected elements or unusual setting or combinations. My tittles sometimes raise questions; make the spectator think. In the painting, I try to bring an underlying, perhaps enigmatic reading, a space to give the viewer the opportunity to fill in their own interpretation, to ask an unanswerable question. In the end, it comes down to the fact that by making the choice I reveal part of the inner drive that the spectator reinterprets.

Paul’s website is www.paulkenens.be.