1994, Dominique and Hart, 8x10 inches, oil on gessoed Arches paper, by Kenney Mencher
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Shipping takes 3–4 Weeks
This ships from Round Lake Beach, Illinois. A suburb outside of Chicago.
I use UPS and sometimes US Post.
This little painting comes with a lot of history. I made it in 1994 while I was in grad school at the University of Cincinnati, studying in the DAAP program (Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning). It’s based on a reference photo I shot years earlier, back when I was living in Alphabet City in New York City during a pretty chaotic time in my life.
After my parents kicked me out right before high school graduation, I bounced between places—first with my lover, Mason, in Brooklyn, then into an apartment on Ave C in the Lower East Side. I lived there with a guy named Hart, who I had a complicated relationship with. Hart worked at a film company in SOHO and I needed a job. One of my neighbors, Dominique, hired me to work construction on a neighboring building. Simultaneously, Hart and I were fixing up our place using leftover building materials from job sites. Later, after I moved to Cincinnati, then briefly back to New York for undergrad at CUNY Lehman, I reconnected with them and took some photos for painting references. This piece comes from one of those photo sessions.
Hart and Dominique were proud of their physiques and had no problem posing for me. I was still heavily influenced by the Bay Area Figurative painters—especially Elmer Bischoff and Richard Diebenkorn—and I was trying to get a sense of that same loose, abstracted energy in my own work. I was painting like crazy at the time, sometimes five or six pieces a week, so I had to find affordable surfaces to work on. In this case, I taped down a piece of Arches watercolor paper, treated it with blue-tinted gesso, and went straight in with oils using stiff bristle brushes.
The surface has a lot of texture—there are visible brushstrokes and impasto from the bristle brushes, and you can still see some of the blue underpainting peeking through. I was working fast and intuitively, focusing on gesture and color rather than fine detail. The space is barely defined—it’s really just the figures, cropped close, locked in a kind of silent interaction. The anatomy is loosely suggested with angular planes and warm/cool contrasts, while the background and lighting are abstracted, more about mood than realism.
This is part of my Fresh Finds series—paintings and studies from my archive that have stayed with me for decades. I’ve decided to release them now to give collectors a deeper sense of my journey and the work that shaped me early on. These pieces are raw and personal, and they’ve been part of my life for 30+ years. I think they still hold up, and I hope someone else will connect with the story and the work.
Details
Title: Dominique and Hart
Medium: Oil on gessoed Arches watercolor paper
Size: 8 x 10 inches
Year: 1994
Surface: Paper mounted to board with tape (edges deckled)
Frame: Not included
Condition: Excellent; some edge wear from taping and storage
Influences: Bay Area Figurative, especially Bischoff and Diebenkorn
Brushwork: Thick bristle strokes, visible texture
Subject: Two semi-nude male figures from photo reference
Part of: “Fresh Finds” archive release
Ships from: Round Lake Beach, Illinois
FREE SHIPPING
Shipping takes 3–4 Weeks
This ships from Round Lake Beach, Illinois. A suburb outside of Chicago.
I use UPS and sometimes US Post.
This little painting comes with a lot of history. I made it in 1994 while I was in grad school at the University of Cincinnati, studying in the DAAP program (Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning). It’s based on a reference photo I shot years earlier, back when I was living in Alphabet City in New York City during a pretty chaotic time in my life.
After my parents kicked me out right before high school graduation, I bounced between places—first with my lover, Mason, in Brooklyn, then into an apartment on Ave C in the Lower East Side. I lived there with a guy named Hart, who I had a complicated relationship with. Hart worked at a film company in SOHO and I needed a job. One of my neighbors, Dominique, hired me to work construction on a neighboring building. Simultaneously, Hart and I were fixing up our place using leftover building materials from job sites. Later, after I moved to Cincinnati, then briefly back to New York for undergrad at CUNY Lehman, I reconnected with them and took some photos for painting references. This piece comes from one of those photo sessions.
Hart and Dominique were proud of their physiques and had no problem posing for me. I was still heavily influenced by the Bay Area Figurative painters—especially Elmer Bischoff and Richard Diebenkorn—and I was trying to get a sense of that same loose, abstracted energy in my own work. I was painting like crazy at the time, sometimes five or six pieces a week, so I had to find affordable surfaces to work on. In this case, I taped down a piece of Arches watercolor paper, treated it with blue-tinted gesso, and went straight in with oils using stiff bristle brushes.
The surface has a lot of texture—there are visible brushstrokes and impasto from the bristle brushes, and you can still see some of the blue underpainting peeking through. I was working fast and intuitively, focusing on gesture and color rather than fine detail. The space is barely defined—it’s really just the figures, cropped close, locked in a kind of silent interaction. The anatomy is loosely suggested with angular planes and warm/cool contrasts, while the background and lighting are abstracted, more about mood than realism.
This is part of my Fresh Finds series—paintings and studies from my archive that have stayed with me for decades. I’ve decided to release them now to give collectors a deeper sense of my journey and the work that shaped me early on. These pieces are raw and personal, and they’ve been part of my life for 30+ years. I think they still hold up, and I hope someone else will connect with the story and the work.
Details
Title: Dominique and Hart
Medium: Oil on gessoed Arches watercolor paper
Size: 8 x 10 inches
Year: 1994
Surface: Paper mounted to board with tape (edges deckled)
Frame: Not included
Condition: Excellent; some edge wear from taping and storage
Influences: Bay Area Figurative, especially Bischoff and Diebenkorn
Brushwork: Thick bristle strokes, visible texture
Subject: Two semi-nude male figures from photo reference
Part of: “Fresh Finds” archive release
Ships from: Round Lake Beach, Illinois
FREE SHIPPING
Shipping takes 3–4 Weeks
This ships from Round Lake Beach, Illinois. A suburb outside of Chicago.
I use UPS and sometimes US Post.
This little painting comes with a lot of history. I made it in 1994 while I was in grad school at the University of Cincinnati, studying in the DAAP program (Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning). It’s based on a reference photo I shot years earlier, back when I was living in Alphabet City in New York City during a pretty chaotic time in my life.
After my parents kicked me out right before high school graduation, I bounced between places—first with my lover, Mason, in Brooklyn, then into an apartment on Ave C in the Lower East Side. I lived there with a guy named Hart, who I had a complicated relationship with. Hart worked at a film company in SOHO and I needed a job. One of my neighbors, Dominique, hired me to work construction on a neighboring building. Simultaneously, Hart and I were fixing up our place using leftover building materials from job sites. Later, after I moved to Cincinnati, then briefly back to New York for undergrad at CUNY Lehman, I reconnected with them and took some photos for painting references. This piece comes from one of those photo sessions.
Hart and Dominique were proud of their physiques and had no problem posing for me. I was still heavily influenced by the Bay Area Figurative painters—especially Elmer Bischoff and Richard Diebenkorn—and I was trying to get a sense of that same loose, abstracted energy in my own work. I was painting like crazy at the time, sometimes five or six pieces a week, so I had to find affordable surfaces to work on. In this case, I taped down a piece of Arches watercolor paper, treated it with blue-tinted gesso, and went straight in with oils using stiff bristle brushes.
The surface has a lot of texture—there are visible brushstrokes and impasto from the bristle brushes, and you can still see some of the blue underpainting peeking through. I was working fast and intuitively, focusing on gesture and color rather than fine detail. The space is barely defined—it’s really just the figures, cropped close, locked in a kind of silent interaction. The anatomy is loosely suggested with angular planes and warm/cool contrasts, while the background and lighting are abstracted, more about mood than realism.
This is part of my Fresh Finds series—paintings and studies from my archive that have stayed with me for decades. I’ve decided to release them now to give collectors a deeper sense of my journey and the work that shaped me early on. These pieces are raw and personal, and they’ve been part of my life for 30+ years. I think they still hold up, and I hope someone else will connect with the story and the work.
Details
Title: Dominique and Hart
Medium: Oil on gessoed Arches watercolor paper
Size: 8 x 10 inches
Year: 1994
Surface: Paper mounted to board with tape (edges deckled)
Frame: Not included
Condition: Excellent; some edge wear from taping and storage
Influences: Bay Area Figurative, especially Bischoff and Diebenkorn
Brushwork: Thick bristle strokes, visible texture
Subject: Two semi-nude male figures from photo reference
Part of: “Fresh Finds” archive release
Ships from: Round Lake Beach, Illinois
