David Kenney makes art and writes fiction.
The two practices intertwine, with each providing a narrative for the other.
David lives and works in North East England.
He was born in 1982.

    • NORTHERN EXPRESSIONS - Woodend Gallery, Scarborough - January 2025

    • OWTSIDE - Community House, Peterlee - August 2024

    • FERENS OPEN EXHIBITION - Ferens Art Gallery, Hull - June 2024

    • EMERGING ARTISTS EXHIBITION - Skipton Town Hall, Skipton - June 2024

    • ANOTHER BADGER IN THE WALL - Badger in the wall gallery, North Yorkshire - June 2024

    • LOOK IF YOU WANT - The Peckam Pelican, London - May 2024

    • MUNICIPAL - 50 MZ, Liverpool - May 2024

    • LOST LOVE - Fronteer Gallery, Sheffield - February 2024

    • THE GRAND OLD OPEN – Redcar Palace, Redcar – November 2023

    • PUNCHCARD – Middlesbrough Art Week, The Auxiliary, Middlesbrough – September 2023

    • RON LAPWORTH - FULL CIRCLE, Peterlee - July 2024

    • STOCKTON ART FAIR - Stockton Art Festival, Stockton-on-Tees - July 2024

    • NORTHERN EXPRESSIONS - Artist Development Programme, Scarborough Museums - 2024

    • TIMES VII - Shelter, 87 Gallery/Art Link Hull - November 2024

Statement

David Kenney paints, makes sculpture and writes.

David uses hard-edge painting, primarily with acrylics, to explore shadow and light in architectural forms. His paintings consist of many layers, adding and removing paint using a variety of methods and tools to achieve realistic textures.

His sculptural work explores similar themes to his paintings, with recurring motifs of basic architectural forms included throughout. David uses cast and mould to create precise, geometric forms in Jesmonite, using acid to remove surface layers to produce a concrete-like texture; often using coal, rusted iron and moss to create variation.

In all of his visual work, David pays particular attention to texture, shadow and light to give the pieces a feeling of past use and interaction; surfaces worn by the passing of time and human intervention occupy seemingly timeless landscapes; liminal spaces devoid of human presence.

A constant theme of worldbuilding runs through David’s work, with every piece having a place in a drafted story set in a fictional universe. Each painting or sculpture has a written counterpart; a chapter or scene that contributes to a grander narrative. 

David lives and works in North East England.

The Constant State

I started drawing imagined architecture in 2019; brutalist dwellings based on basic geometric shapes.

I began to think up stories to add context to these buildings. Over time, these fragments of stories became a discernible narrative; a storyline with a beginning, a middle, and an end.

I have been slowly piecing the story together over time. The world I’ve built is called The Constant State, and the story has three parts, or arcs.

My practice now revolves around and lives within this world; this story. As I make a painting or sculpture, I often write a chapter of the story to accompany it, and vice versa. As I develop my style and experiment, the story takes tangents, twists and turns. The world is being built and the story is being written one painting or sculpture at a time.

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