Kenney Mencher: Painting and Drawing Women

Monday

Painting and Drawing Women

Mourning Gloria, 11x14 inches, oil paint on canvas panel by KennEy Mencher

Recently I've upped my game a little bit. I started using a slightly different kind of oil paint called alkyds. These kinds of paints have a quicker drying time and can be much thicker than traditional oil paints and also seem to be a bit stronger and more archival. The paint is also a bit glossier than traditional oil paints and for this reason I've taken a couple of different shots from oblique or strange angle so that you can see the brushwork and see the gloss on the painting.

I’ve always felt a little weird about making art about women. Especially since I’m a man and I’m an artist, to make art about women is basically to objectify them. Years ago, a student asked me why don’t you paint women more, and I replying to her that the reason is it makes me feel a little bit like I’m participating in some kind chauvinist agenda especially when it comes to art history there is even a term for art that’s me to please the male point of view, “the male gaze.”

Nevertheless, almost all art is about objectification. When talking about his artists are by their very nature making images of beautiful things that people should find beautiful. I certainly do this in almost all my paintings of men but with women unless, will about it. I’ve been trying to work this out because I realize that a lot of women, like a lot of men, like to be looked at and consider their physical presence a sort of work of art. So when I make art about women, and portraying women, I try to make them look a little bit stronger and make it a little bit more about their personality rather than just their physical beauty as would appeal to a straight man perhaps or an immature point of view of the female in the female form. A lot of the images that I get of women are often from blogs that are run by lesbians who have a slightly different aesthetic than straight men do. I hope that this comes out in my paintings.