NSFW Paintings of Naked Men by Kenney Mencher ( 8x8 inches for $60 or 11x11 inches for $75)
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Sorry, I cannot sign the book. The book will be sent directly to you from the printers.
I put this book together as a full portfolio of the paintings and drawings of men that I’ve made over the last several years. It includes 43 works—oil paintings, crayon drawings, and mixed-media pieces—collected into one monograph. It’s basically the most complete overview of this side of my studio practice, especially the part of my work that speaks directly to queer visual culture, gay bear aesthetics, and the long tradition of the male nude in art history.
When I make these images, I’m thinking about how the body can feel powerful, intimate, funny, and direct, all at once. A lot of the men in these pieces come out of bear culture and the broader queer community—groups that continue to make headlines around visibility, body positivity.. Right now there’s a lot of news about book bans, attacks on LGBTQ+ expression, and debates about public art and queer visibility. A book like this sits right in the middle of those conversations. It’s very intentionally about claiming space for bodies that don’t always get represented in art books, especially not with this kind of honesty and physicality.
Visually, the pieces in this book lean into texture, light, shadow, and gesture. I’m not trying to make photorealistic images. I want the materials to feel active and physical—thick bristle-brush strokes that move in the direction of muscles, knife marks that cut across planes of the body, and places where I draw into the wet paint with the back of a brush to pull out hair and texture. I use chiaroscuro in a very hands-on way: deep shadows, strong highlights, and non-local color (meaning I don’t stick to “skin tone” but push hue and chroma into oranges, violets, or greens to give volume and heat). That’s something people often connect with—the sense that the figure has weight and presence.
When the works are done in crayon on Rives BFK, the surface gets built up through hatching and cross-hatching, almost like sculpting with lines. That cotton paper drinks in the pigment and lets me dig in without tearing the surface. The watercolor pieces have loose washes with sharper crayon marks on top, a mix that lets the figure feel alive and in motion.
The themes in this book include desire, confidence, humor, aging, masculinity, queer community, and the emotional openness that comes from being truly seen. Some of the compositions are quiet; others are direct and confrontational. Many of the pieces relate to art-historical traditions—Baroque studies, ancient sculpture, early 20th-century American figuration—but they’re filtered through my own mark-making and the lived culture of today’s queer and bear communities.
For people who collect my work, this book gives a sense of my overall career and how the male nude has shaped my painting language. For someone new to my art, it’s a pretty honest introduction. My goal with every piece in this book is to make the viewer feel something—warmth, humor, desire, tenderness, or just the pleasure of looking at the body rendered with energy and volume.
I’m extremely careful with shipping, and I pack everything in sturdy, custom-built boxes or rigid envelopes to protect the book. That’s part of why I take a little extra time to ship—I want it to arrive in perfect condition.
Details
Title: NSFW: Paintings of Naked Men – A Monograph
Artist: Kenney Mencher
Contents: 43 paintings and drawings
Media represented: Oil on canvas, crayon on Rives BFK, watercolor and mixed media
Sorry, I cannot sign the book. The book will be sent directly to you from the printers.
I put this book together as a full portfolio of the paintings and drawings of men that I’ve made over the last several years. It includes 43 works—oil paintings, crayon drawings, and mixed-media pieces—collected into one monograph. It’s basically the most complete overview of this side of my studio practice, especially the part of my work that speaks directly to queer visual culture, gay bear aesthetics, and the long tradition of the male nude in art history.
When I make these images, I’m thinking about how the body can feel powerful, intimate, funny, and direct, all at once. A lot of the men in these pieces come out of bear culture and the broader queer community—groups that continue to make headlines around visibility, body positivity.. Right now there’s a lot of news about book bans, attacks on LGBTQ+ expression, and debates about public art and queer visibility. A book like this sits right in the middle of those conversations. It’s very intentionally about claiming space for bodies that don’t always get represented in art books, especially not with this kind of honesty and physicality.
Visually, the pieces in this book lean into texture, light, shadow, and gesture. I’m not trying to make photorealistic images. I want the materials to feel active and physical—thick bristle-brush strokes that move in the direction of muscles, knife marks that cut across planes of the body, and places where I draw into the wet paint with the back of a brush to pull out hair and texture. I use chiaroscuro in a very hands-on way: deep shadows, strong highlights, and non-local color (meaning I don’t stick to “skin tone” but push hue and chroma into oranges, violets, or greens to give volume and heat). That’s something people often connect with—the sense that the figure has weight and presence.
When the works are done in crayon on Rives BFK, the surface gets built up through hatching and cross-hatching, almost like sculpting with lines. That cotton paper drinks in the pigment and lets me dig in without tearing the surface. The watercolor pieces have loose washes with sharper crayon marks on top, a mix that lets the figure feel alive and in motion.
The themes in this book include desire, confidence, humor, aging, masculinity, queer community, and the emotional openness that comes from being truly seen. Some of the compositions are quiet; others are direct and confrontational. Many of the pieces relate to art-historical traditions—Baroque studies, ancient sculpture, early 20th-century American figuration—but they’re filtered through my own mark-making and the lived culture of today’s queer and bear communities.
For people who collect my work, this book gives a sense of my overall career and how the male nude has shaped my painting language. For someone new to my art, it’s a pretty honest introduction. My goal with every piece in this book is to make the viewer feel something—warmth, humor, desire, tenderness, or just the pleasure of looking at the body rendered with energy and volume.
I’m extremely careful with shipping, and I pack everything in sturdy, custom-built boxes or rigid envelopes to protect the book. That’s part of why I take a little extra time to ship—I want it to arrive in perfect condition.
Details
Title: NSFW: Paintings of Naked Men – A Monograph
Artist: Kenney Mencher
Contents: 43 paintings and drawings
Media represented: Oil on canvas, crayon on Rives BFK, watercolor and mixed media
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