I'm Kenney Mencher. I'm an artist who left a tenured professorship in 2016 to pursue making art full time. This blog is about art, art history, with a emphasis on human rights. I make homoerotic art featuring bears, otters & other gay wildlife.
This portfolio brings together selected earlier works that relate to concerns I am now returning to in a new body of work. These paintings and studies reflect my long engagement with the figure, masculinity, self-presentation, vulnerability, and the expressive possibilities of paint.
I’m currently developing a new project that builds on some of the formal and symbolic content in these older works while moving in a more personal and expanded direction. That newer work draws on self-portraiture, aging, memory, embodiment, and the emotional and cultural meanings carried by the male figure.
What connects these pieces to the current project is not just subject matter, but structure and method: direct figuration, visible brushwork, distortion, cropped compositions, physical presence, and an interest in how identity can be conveyed through posture, flesh, scale, and paint handling. Some of these older works also contain symbolic or archetypal elements that continue to matter to me as I think through the newer paintings. I see this portfolio as background and foundation: a record of earlier work that helps clarify where the new body of work is coming from and what it is beginning to become.
Following up on my earlier post. When I was in high school I read the gigantic book by Irving Stone called "Lust for Life," and was constantly lookin
g him up, reading stuff, and even writing short stories.
When I finally got to see the Kirk Douglas flick based on the book, my fate was sealed. All through college, my roommate, Davis, and I quoted the movie to each other.
It's funny how his miserable tough life was somehow something to aspire to.
Yesterday evening I went to the Arena Chapel in Padua and finally got to see the frescoes by Giotto in person. I’ve been teaching this material for around 35 years, so it was a big deal for me. It was exciting in the obvious art historical way, but it also hit me on a more personal level.
I booked an evening slot, around 7:20. That turned out to be a good choice because the chapel was very well lit and the whole experience felt a bit calmer. The visit is tightly controlled. Before you enter the actual chapel, they put you in a sort of glass airlock with about 20 other people and show a 15-minute overview video while everyone sits in comfortable chairs. At first, the arrogant part of me was thinking, “I know all this already. Grumble, grumble.” But I didn’t. Not really.
The video was excellent. It included a lot of additional information and some very high-resolution images of the frescoes, including close telescopic details that you would never really get on your own while standing in the chapel. It was genuinely worth it.
Once you get inside, you only have 20 minutes in the chapel itself, and you view it from a raised carpeted platform. That sounds brief, and it is, but it was still enough to really get to me, both emotionally and intellectually.
What struck me most was how complete, saturated, and colorful the frescoes are. Reproductions don’t really prepare you for that. I was also able to take some close-up shots of details that are harder to find, especially Hell and the Virtues and Vices.
My photos are of mixed quality, but the experience itself was not. It was one of those moments where something I’ve taught for decades suddenly felt fresh again.
If you want to learn more about Giotto and the Arena Chapel, I do a deep dive into it in my online art history courses.
I’ll probably end up remaking and rewriting some of those videos and texts when I get back to the USA, assuming all this still feels as vivid in a month or so.
Feel free to use, distribute or publish these images without having to credit me. It drives me nuts that it's so hard to get copyright free images.
Vincent van Gogh grew up in a strict religious household in
the Netherlands. His father was a minister in the Dutch Reformed Church, and
their family held strong Calvinist beliefs. Even though their life was
modest, van Gogh had some early exposure to upper middle-class culture because
his uncle and cousin were both art dealers. This connection eventually led him
into the art world.
As a young adult, he worked for an art dealership with
branches in The Hague, London, and Paris. While in London, he lived in a
boarding house and became emotionally attached to the daughter of the landlady.
His behavior in that situation was described as obsessive, and it seems he had
trouble forming healthy social relationships. Some of this comes through in his
letters, and the novel Lust for Life by Irving Stone, which
fictionalizes his life, really emphasizes this. That book, published in the
1930s, shaped how a lot of people saw van Gogh, especially after the film
version came out.
He eventually lost his job and tried several other paths,
including working at a school and training to become a preacher. He studied
briefly to become a minister and went to the Borinage, a coal-mining
region in Belgium, to work as a missionary. He lived in very poor conditions
there and gave away most of his belongings to the miners. He wrote that this
period was deeply difficult for him, both physically and mentally. His health
got worse, and his brother Theo helped bring him back from a breakdown.
At some point, he decided to dedicate himself to art. Theo
supported him financially so he could study and work full time. During this
period, he fell in love with his widowed cousin, Kee Vos, and proposed to her
even after she had rejected him. Letters suggest he didn’t take the rejection
well, and his behavior upset her family. There were other instances where he
struggled with social norms and boundaries.
He went to The Hague to work more seriously as an artist and
connected with his cousin Anton Mauve, a well-known painter at the time. Mauve
helped him by giving him materials and teaching him some basics, like how to
work with plaster casts. But van Gogh’s behavior—along with his living
arrangement with a woman named Sien, who had worked as a prostitute—caused
tension. They lived together for a while, and she modeled for some of his early
works. Eventually, he had to leave The Hague because of financial problems and
social pressure.
After leaving The Hague, he returned to the Netherlands and
focused on painting working-class people and rural scenes. These paintings were
done in dark, earth-tone colors and show the influence of artists like
Rembrandt. But van Gogh didn’t have strong academic training
in figure drawing or color theory at this point, so some of these
works—like The Potato Eaters—look rough or uneven. Still, art historians
consider this an important early phase in his career.
After going to Paris and seeing the work of Georges Seurat
and Claude Monet, van Gogh had a major shift in how he approached painting.
These artists, especially Seurat with his pointillism and Monet with his
use of light and color, really changed how van Gogh thought about technique.
This period marked a turning point for him. He left the more traditional art
world behind and moved to Arles in the south of France. There, with fewer
people watching or judging him, he worked constantly. He was extremely self-critical
and pushed himself harder than anyone else could.
Van Gogh couldn’t handle life in Paris for long, so he and
his brother Theo arranged for him to live in Arles. There, he rented a place
known as the Yellow House. Paul Gauguin came to stay with him, and during that
time van Gogh created an entire series of sunflower paintings to
decorate a room for his guest. He painted obsessively—sometimes making two or
three paintings in a single day, along with several sketches. This nonstop work
helped him improve his technique. Even though some of the drawings were awkward,
and his figures were sometimes off, he had a strong natural sense for color and
composition.
Author Malcolm Gladwell has talked about the idea that you
need around 10,000 hours of practice to become really skilled at something. He
gives examples like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. Van Gogh might not have heard of
that rule, but he painted so much that he did develop a solid understanding of
how to use color and structure. His improvement came not from formal training
but from constant practice.
Eventually, things got tense between van Gogh and Gauguin. They
argued a lot, and after one fight, van Gogh was found in bed with a serious
injury to his ear. Police reports show he was bleeding heavily. Gauguin denied
knowing what had happened and left town. There’s a theory that Gauguin, who had
fencing experience, might have injured van Gogh with a sword during
their fight. Other accounts say van Gogh may have cut his own ear and
gave it to a woman at a nearby brothel. The details are unclear, but this event
marked the beginning of a serious breakdown.
Dr. Paul Gachet was the physician who looked after van Gogh
during the final months of his life. He lived in Auvers-sur-Oise, a small town
north of Paris, and had an interest in both medicine and art. He was considered
a bit of a dilettante—someone with a casual but enthusiastic interest in
the arts. He painted, collected artwork, and was known to support artists who
were struggling with depression or creative blocks.
Gachet treated van Gogh with homeopathic remedies, which
were common at the time. In one of van Gogh’s portraits of Dr. Gachet, he’s
shown seated beside a plant that botanists have identified as Digitalis
(foxglove), which was used historically as a heart medicine but could also
affect mood. Some researchers think van Gogh may have been taking it as part of
his treatment. Others believe the plant in the painting might be Eryngium,
another herb sometimes used in folk medicine.
Dr. Gachet encouraged van Gogh to keep painting, believing
that creative work would help him recover. Van Gogh took this advice seriously
and produced more than 70 paintings in about 70 days. This period was highly
productive, but it may also have pushed him too far. He was likely still
dealing with mental health problems, and some biographies describe this as a
time when he was showing signs of agitation or instability.
One of the last paintings van Gogh completed is often called
Wheatfield with Crows. Some writers have connected the imagery in that
painting—specifically the dark crows and stormy sky—with death. They point to
letters he wrote around that time that suggest he was deeply unhappy. But
there's still disagreement about how he died.
The standard story is that van Gogh shot himself in the
stomach while in a wheat field, then walked back to the inn where he was
staying and died two days later. However, some historians believe he may not
have taken his own life. A theory supported by more recent research says he may
have been accidentally shot by two boys playing with a gun, and chose not to
blame them.
Van Gogh’s death happened in July 1890. Just six months
later, his younger brother Theo also died, likely from complications related to
syphilis. Theo had always been closely tied to Vincent, emotionally and
financially. Some people think that after Vincent’s death, Theo’s health got
worse quickly, possibly due to grief or the stress of losing his brother.
The story of Vincent van Gogh is often told as a story of
misunderstood genius, but the facts show a much more complicated and human
life. He worked constantly, struggled with illness, and had a close but
difficult relationship with his family. While people often focus on his talent
or the tragedy of his death, his life also shows the challenges faced by
artists trying to find their way outside of mainstream systems.
In this part, let’s take a closer look at one of Vincent van Gogh’s
most well-known paintings, Starry Night. You’ve probably seen it on
posters or book covers, and there's even a song about it by Don McLean. It’s
one of those works that became widely recognized, partly because it reproduces
so well. The colors are bold and the lines are really clear, which made it
ideal for printing in books and posters, especially during the 1930s and 1940s.
That might be one reason why it gained popularity after his death.
Van Gogh didn’t sell many paintings during his life—maybe
one or two—and when he died, he left behind a huge number of finished works.
That gave people a complete picture of what he had done, which helped build his
reputation later on.
When you look at Starry Night, the first thing you
notice is how heavy and textured the paint is. The surface has a lot of
build-up—what’s called impasto—where the paint is so thick it stands up
from the canvas. In reproductions, that’s hard to see, but it’s a big part of
the original painting. The sky is full of swirling lines and dashes that work
together in a way similar to optical mixing. That’s a technique where
small bits of color are placed next to each other so your eye blends them.
Georges Seurat used this in pointillism, and you can also see it in the
pastel work of Edgar Degas.
The swirling lines in the sky curve and loop around, and
they make the sky feel full of movement. You can see the same kind of curved
lines repeated in other parts of the painting—the tall cypress tree on the left
rises up in flame-like shapes, and the rolling hills in the background also
echo these curves. That creates a kind of visual rhythm across the painting.
The town at the bottom, with its small buildings and church
steeple, is made of simple, blocky shapes. Van Gogh outlines a lot of the
forms, which gives them a sort of diagrammatic or even cartoon-like
look. He used very saturated colors—often straight from the tube—without
blending or shading them in the traditional sense. He didn’t focus on chiaroscuro,
which is the way painters often show light and shadow to create depth. Instead,
he was focused on how color itself could carry emotion or meaning.
Unlike Claude Monet or Edgar Degas, who were trying to
capture how light looked in a specific moment, van Gogh wasn’t trying to record
what he saw directly. He was interpreting what he saw and building a picture
from memory, imagination, and personal meaning.
Some interpretations of Starry Night are based on
ideas from van Gogh’s letters and background. He was deeply interested in
religion and had studied theology earlier in his life. Some people see
connections between this painting and a concept from Saint Augustine’s
writings. Augustine described two cities: the City of God, which is
eternal and spiritual, and the City of Man, which is temporary and
earthly.
In Starry Night, the town and church are small and
set low in the painting. If you were reading it through that lens, they could
represent the City of Man. The swirling sky above—huge, luminous, and
full of energy—might be a symbol of the greater spiritual world, or what
Augustine would call the City of God. The tall cypress tree, often used
in cemeteries as a grave marker, could also be read as a symbol of death or a
link between earth and sky. That’s not clearly proven, but it’s a possible
interpretation based on religious and cultural traditions van Gogh would have
known.
The mountains in the background stretch out beyond the town,
giving the landscape a feeling of endless space. This echoes earlier Romantic
ideas about nature, like those seen in the work of Caspar David Friedrich,
where natural scenes were used to express spiritual themes. Whether van Gogh
intended all of this or not, we do know from his letters that he thought deeply
about both religion and nature, and he saw painting as a way to explore both.
Let’s take a closer look at one of Vincent van Gogh’s self-portraits.
It’s worth examining not just for what it shows about him, but for how he
handled the painting formally—things like paint texture, color, line, and
technique. In this portrait, the paint is applied very thickly. If you look at
the background, you’ll notice it has a swirling wave-like pattern that’s
similar to the sky in Starry Night. But when you move in closer to the
face, the marks change. They become shorter, tighter, almost like dashes—somewhat
similar to the pastel strokes used by Edgar Degas or Mary Cassatt when they
were modeling light and shadow on faces.
Van Gogh handles different parts of the painting using
different types of marks. The face has one texture, the hair another, and the
background moves in smooth, curving waves. The clothing is laid out using quick
contour lines that follow the shape of the arms. These lines wrap around the
figure in a way artists refer to as cross-contouring, where you use
directional marks to suggest volume. Altogether, the painting shows a mix of
techniques. It also captures van Gogh’s likeness accurately—something that’s not
always discussed, but worth noting.
When you compare this to an earlier work like The Potato
Eaters, there’s a big difference in skill. In those earlier paintings, the
drawing is clumsy, and the color isn’t well handled. People often try to find
early signs of his later style in them, but it’s clear he was still learning at
that point. The figures are blocky and awkward, and the tones are muddy. He
hadn’t yet figured out how to control color, especially muted or low-key
tones. You can see the effort, but it doesn’t yet show the confident handling
of his later paintings.
Another interesting painting to talk about is Bedroom in Arles.
At first glance, the perspective looks a little off—as if the room is tilting
or skewed. But that effect isn’t necessarily a mistake. Van Gogh painted
several versions of this room, and one is on display in New York. When you get
very close to it—about as close as he would have been while painting—you can
see how some of the odd angles come from the way we naturally see space when
we’re right up against something. Also, the actual room wasn’t a perfect
rectangle. One of the corners jutted out at an odd angle, so part of what looks
like distortion is just what was really there.
The outlines around the furniture and objects are thick and
solid. That makes the forms stand out clearly, almost like a poster or a
cartoon. He also followed the direction of objects with his brushstrokes—for
example, vertical strokes on the bedposts and curved strokes along the
floorboards. These choices add structure and texture.
The color relationships are also worth mentioning. Van Gogh
often used bright, saturated colors, and he liked to pair warm and cool tones
to create contrast. In this painting, the bed is orange and the walls are blue.
That blue-orange contrast helps the bed stand out and gives the scene depth.
While it’s tempting to interpret the painting emotionally,
we know this was a personal space for van Gogh. He arranged it carefully and
painted it more than once, which suggests it was meaningful to him. The room
was small and orderly, and it might have felt like a controlled environment
during a period when much of his life wasn’t. That reading isn’t directly
confirmed in the letters, but the attention he gave to this subject makes it
likely that it mattered to him.
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