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meticulous attention to detail had always necessitated a slow working pace, and now, in his late forties, burdened by ill health and a drinking problem, he simply couldn't produce enough work to keep up with demand. By the late 1970s his celebrity began to recede. He painted sporadically and sold work out of his studio to help pay his expenses, but was never able to complete enough paintings for another gallery exhibition.
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166:, and had become fascinated with surrealism. The influence is plain in his dark, figurative works of the 1940s and '50s. Taking Breton's proclamation that "only the marvelous is beautiful" to heart, he painted "automatically", without conscious planning. Except for a few portraits done for friends, he never tried to reproduce reality in his paintings, always searching instead for deeper meaning.
192:, won a prize and cash award. The following year SAM presented a solo exhibition of Kenney's work. At age 24 he most likely was (and still is) the youngest artist to have a solo show at the museum. As the Pacific Northwest's most popular young painter he soon found himself overwhelmed with commissioned work, and fled to California, where he would stay for the next several years.
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Figures and representational images disappeared. In their place appeared a long series of paintings that were variations on an inner circle radiating misty echoes like the reverberations of a gong. They are elemental forms, drenched with archetypal resonance; symbols of source as well as pure studies
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Kenney returned to
Seattle in 1944. After his mother remarried and moved to Long Beach, he moved in with the family of a friend, Jack Griffin. He routinely painted through the night in the basement room he shared with Griffin, who was so impressed with Kenney's work that he took some of his paintings
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Despite his success, Kenney was growing tired of the symmetric shapes of his most popular work, and began loosening up his composition and breaking his shapes into pieces. As he explored these new directions he became increasingly uncomfortable with the pressure to churn out new paintings. His
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In 1942 Kenney's older brother Jack was drafted into the U.S. Army; shortly after that, his father died. An average student at best, he dropped out of high school on his 18th birthday. He was promptly called up by the draft, but, being underweight, was rejected. He went to work at the
Douglas
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Kenney remained a master colorist and technician among
Northwest painters. However, injuries and alcohol greatly reduced his artistic output. His old friend and patron Merch Pease helped him reorder his health and his finances somewhat, and in 1996 the Port Angeles Fine Art Center mounted
203:. He spent the next six years there, becoming the company's director of display, then moved to a different art dealership, W. & J. Sloane. He painted only sporadically during this time, but learned a great deal about Asian art. His fascination with an Eastern symbol, the
58:, and did very well in art classes. Although an intensely energetic kid, he had health problems related to his small stature. At one point in his teenage years he suffered a case of mumps so serious that he had to spend several weeks in bed, his weight dropping to 70 pounds.
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in 1968. The show was such a success that
Willard immediately wanted to schedule an encore. The Seattle Art Museum, initially somewhat skeptical of Kenney's newer work, slated a solo exhibition for 1973, in tandem with an exhibition at Seattle's Foster/White Gallery.
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As the 1960s progressed the world seemed to be catching up to Kenney's proto-psychedelic visions. He moved back to
Seattle in 1964, and subsequent gallery shows were met with strong sales and critical acclaim. In 1967 the
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to the
Frederick & Nelson's department store in downtown Seattle, which had a small art gallery. Kenney's first exhibition, along with sculptor
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with his family at age six. He was interested in art from a young age, copying pictures from newspapers and art magazines. He had an early love of
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169:"He never saw the world as others see it," said a longtime friend and patron, Merch Pease. "His work is highly personal. It's pure invention."
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In the late 1940s Kenney lived in a small apartment near the
University of Washington with the brilliant, combative, hard-drinking painter
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traveling exhibition. Mark Tobey and Morris Graves' agent in New York, Marian
Willard, arranged a New York exhibition for Kenney at the
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30:(1925â2001) was an American abstract painter, described by critics as a leading figure in the second generation of the '
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recognized him with a display of his work at the
Academy and an award of $ 2,500. His paintings were included in the
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Kenney, Leo (1925-2001): Painter of the Spirit of the Circle, by
Deloris Tarzan Ament; HistoryLink.org Essay 5350
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After briefly returning to Douglas Aircraft, he stumbled onto a job, in 1952, as a display artist at
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328:, by Sheila Farr, Leo Kenney, & Museum of Northwest Art; University of Washington Press, 2000;
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Gilkey, Richard (1925-1997): Painter of Human Consciousness HistoryLink.org Essay 5404
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had a pronounced effect on his art. The writer Deloris Tarzan Ament would later say:
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Suffering from cancer and emphysema, Kenney died on February 26, 2001, in Seattle.
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http://www.historylink.org/index.cfm?DisplayPage=output.cfm&File_Id=5350
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Modernism in the Pacific Northwest: The Mythic and the Mystical
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Modernism in the Pacific Northwest: the Mythic and the Mystical
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Forever Blue Moon: The Story of Seattle's Most Infamous Tavern
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Annual Exhibition of the Artists of the Pacific Northwest
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Leo Kenney, a Retrospective: Celebrating the Mysteries
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The American Heritage Picture History of World War II
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