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Alla Prima Study of a Bear in Motion

Alla Prima Study of a Bear in Motion

2023 16 x 20" Oil Paint, Painting

Alla Prima Study of a Bear in Motion, 16x20 inches oil on canvas panel by Kenney Mencher.

For years I had trouble accepting my body as I aged. So I began to paint people who looked more like me and I realized I wasn’t alone when I discovered other bears and the concepts behind “body positivity.”

This painting is based in the tenets of the “body positivity” movement. Body positivity refers to the assertion that all people deserve to have a positive body image, regardless of how society and popular culture view ideal shape, size, and appearance.

Some of the goals of the body positivity movement include:

Challenging how society views the body;

Promoting the acceptance of all bodies;

Helping people build confidence and acceptance of their own bodies;

Addressing unrealistic body standards.

This painting was made using the alla prima method. Alla prima is an Italian phrase that means 'at first attempt'. It refers to a wet-on-wet approach whereby wet paint is applied to previous layers of still-wet paint, often in a single sitting. Over the years, the technique has been adopted and adapted by artists from Van Gogh to Velázquez.

This painting is a standard frame size and painted on canvas panel. Canvas panel is a sturdy rigid sheet of archival cardboard with a layer of canvas glued to it.

Canvas board is a good choice for making art because it doesn't flex the way stretched canvas does and so thick layers of paint are less likely to crack as the painting ages. It's also easier and cheaper to frame. If you go to Amazon and search for an, "16x20 inch open back frame" you will see a list of easy to use do it yourself frame kits.

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Kenney Mencher

I was born in Brooklyn February of 1965. During much of my childhood I lived in Brooklyn, the Bronx, upstate NY, Sarasota, Florida, and Manhattan. (Both my mother and father divorced and remarried.) The real hero of my childhood is my older brother Marc who literally changed my diapers, acted as my protector and as my role model. I started to learn to paint and draw when I was six or seven years old and was convinced that I would be an artist from that age on. As a teen at the High School of Art and Design I got my best training in Irwin Greenberg’s class where he taught me how to draw, oil paint and watercolor. I also attended classes at the Cooper Union and Art Students League. My parents threw me out in my senior year of high school, so I earned my GED and worked construction on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. It was a rough time but my older brother and his partner Kirk rescued me by inviting me to move with them to Cincinnati, Ohio to live and study. While a college student, I worked in restaurants and painted as much as I could. After a year at the University of Cincinnati, I went back to the Bronx where I finished college at CUNY Lehman. Lehman is a fantastic college. After completing my undergraduate studies, I lived in California and then Ohio completing my two masters’ degrees in Art History and Studio Art. After school I was lucky enough to have dual careers as an exhibiting artist and tenured professor. In 2014 I began to work on paintings with a strong homoerotic content. Despite excellent sales and well received shows, the galleries I worked with wouldn’t show my new queer work, so I’ve been successfully working mainly directly with my collectors. This change has freed me and allowed me to focus on themes and subjects that, in the past, were rejected or resulted in censorship. Things are going great! In 2016, after eighteen years of teaching art history and studio courses, I resigned a tenured professorship to pursue painting full time.

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orange gradient background image with noise
line drawing of orange-colored sparkle element
line drawing of orange-colored sparkle element
line drawing of orange-colored sparkle element
line drawing of wall paintings and portraits

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Alla Prima Study of a Bear in Motion

2023 16 x 20" Oil Paint, Painting
line drawing of a orange sparkle element
line drawing of a orange sparkle element

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