About The Artist

Artist statement Paul Kenens My subjects come from the immediate environment: they concern people. If it is not about myself, it is about children or women where, in a split second, I notice a movement, an attitude or a trait that arouses a thought that goes beyond the image (or goes against it). A personal detail that remains in the memory. An image that settles and grows in its emotionality (you have to fall a little in love with your subject, even if it is a common thing like a children's toy or a piece of clothing). My work regularly starts with photos of a fixed photo model, with every session I take a few hundred photos which 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, assembled, until you can´t let go of a certain image. It is difficult to explain why a certain image is taking hold of you. It probably has to do with the chaos in the head in determining the direction in which an image will be painted, the thoughts which are attached to it and the intimate feelings that an image can generate. 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 goes. Sometimes the image itself indicates a natural direction, or is this also the result of the interpreter's character? I paint the bottom layer 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 temporary end, I bring details, highlights and I emphatically paint over potential points of atttention. Although the starting point is photographic material, it is always a challenge to make a difference between photo-realism and painted image during the implementation. Each painting is an attempt to enlarge the distance between the two and perhaps with the aim of painting beyond realism. With a painted image you bring something different, something that you don't see in a photo (or virtual image). 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 months later an element is added, that breaks the unambiguity or shifts the focus. At the moment, I am working on a series with a fashion model. The softness, call it sensuality, sometimes in contrast to the aggressiveness of folds in a fabric, makes me paint. The flexibility of the collaboration and the confidence to try out things sometimes create surprising and remarkable images. Some works are poetic, sensual. Others arouse curiosity through the use of unexpected elements, an unusual setting or combination. My titles sometimes raise questions, make the viewer think. In the painting, I try to bring an underlying, perhaps enigmatic reading, a space to give the viewer the opportunity to fill in his own interpretation, to ask an unanswerable question. In the end, it comes to the fact that by the choice that has been made, I reveal a part of the inner drive that the spectator reinterprets.