Create
The artist up close: ‘Baroque surrealist’ Steven Kenny
“The Ribbons”
Steven Kenny can remember the precise moment he realized was wasting his time and talent working as an illustrator.
He was in Florence, Italy, studying as part of his senior year at the Rhode Island School of Design.
At the Galleria degli Uffizi, he could not tear himself away from The Entombment of Christ, by 15th century Dutch master Rogier van der Weyden. “It knocked my socks off,” Kenny recalls. “I don’t know, something resonated really strongly with me. The Northern Renaissance artists’ style has always had a big influence on me – very detailed, heightened color.”
A resident of St. Petersburg since 2014, Kenny has become known – and sought after – for his “surrealist baroque” oils, placing a realistic human figure in nature … and then turning on the tap of his imagination.
“My go-to style had always been realism,” explain the 58-year-old artist. “That just naturally felt right. And I tend to be kind of meticulous anyway. But the surrealist aspect is just the best way to take it to the next step and make it more expressive, and have more of a narrative.”
“Sunrise”
A native of Peekskill, New York (“We weren’t an artsy family growing up, so I never really went to museums”) Kenny was inspired by the progressive rock album covers he studied carefully in his teenage bedroom. From the likes of Yes, Gentle Giant, King Crimson and the more commercially viable artists like David Bowie, Queen and Kansas.
“The Pelican King”
“I loved the artwork for the same reason I loved a lot of the lyrics – it didn’t necessarily have a narrative,” he says. “It just created this mysterious, otherworldly image in my mind, and so did the album covers.
“And that’s really what I like doing. Making it as real as possible, and believable as possible, but it being … not possible.”
Kenny hoped to pursue a career as a fine artist after graduation, but things got off to a slow start, and so, he admits, he was forced to “fall back” on his BFA in illustration to pay the bills.
He created work for Time Magazine, for Celestial Seasonings Herbal Tea (nine box covers of animals and flowers), Microsoft, AT&T and others.
Journey
Sony Music actually commissioned him to create album covers for Journey (Trial By Fire) and Heart (Greatest Hits). “I never really wanted to be an illustrator,” Kenny chuckles. “But it was a great ride, really.”
A 10-year ride that only ended when he and his wife moved to Virginia, and Kenny got a show in a prestigious D.C.-area gallery. The year was 1997.
Heart
And to date, he has not looked back. The Kennys visited St. Petersburg in 2011 (he was dying to see the Dali Museum) and fell in love with the place.
“The Lure”
Kenny’s oils are in galleries all over the country, and are prized by collectors. Locally, there are currently canvases in Leslie Curran’s ARTicles Gallery; next month, as part of the Creative Pinellas Arts Annual show, Kenny will debut a series of 10 abstract paintings.
Dabbling in abstracts, the artist says “I really had a good time doing it. Because in one way, my mind had to shift gears completely. But in another way, what I learned doing them was I was still using the same decision-making process, in terms of creating an image. That was kind of surprising to find that out.”
Asked about the mysterious beauty of his surrealist baroque work, Kenny flashes an enigmatic Mona Lisa smile.
“I always try not to ‘lead the witness’ in giving too many secrets away about what the paintings are actually about,” he explains. “I really hope people feel comfortable enough to find their own interpretation.
“A lot of people are hesitant to do that, because they really want to know what my interpretation was. And a lot of times, I honestly don’t know. I like to be mystified myself.”
“The Cave”
