Description
Slow Dance by Eileen Kennedy
egg tempera on panel
18 x 24 inches
Artist Statement: Slow Dance is my homage to the artist whose work inspired me to transition to egg tempera after more than 30 years of working in oil paint. George Tooker painted several exceptional works featuring Chinese-style paper lanterns. In addition to pink lanterns, this composition features unusual human and animal riverside behavior - couples slow dancing and cormorants drying out their wings. It turned out to be a composition in pink and blue, with the lantern light casting a rosy glow on the dancers' faces. I was also influenced by the many outdoor activities folks engaged in to remain safe during the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 and 2021.
Bio: Except for a brief flirtation with abstraction in her early 20s, Eileen Kennedy has immersed herself in creating figurative, narrative paintings and drawings. She earned a BFA from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY, and later continued her studies at the Art Students League.
During the 80s and 90s she exhibited at galleries, museums, and alternative spaces throughout the mid-Atlantic region. In the mid-90s she signed with the Cooper Gallery in Jersey City, in solo and group exhibitions until the gallery closed in 2000. In 1995, she was awarded an Artist Fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. Her exhibitions of life-scale oil paintings and colored pencil drawings were reviewed in the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Newark Star Ledger, Asbury Park Press, The New York Times and other publications.
In 2008, the artist took some time out from exhibiting to explore new media and techniques. By 2010 she transitioned from oil on canvas to egg tempera on panel. In 2014 she had a two-person show at the Art Alliance of Monmouth County. A show of egg tempera paintings, silver point drawings and watercolors soon followed at Red Bank’s Oyster Point Hotel in 2015. In 2019, 8 of her paintings were included in Nature and Narrative at the Attleboro Fine Arts Museum in Massachusetts, along with 7 other tempera painters from around the country. Since then, she has exhibited at The Painting Center, Salmagundi Club, Blue Mountain Gallery, First Street Gallery, Prince Street Gallery, and Dacia Gallery in New York City. In 2022 she was awarded another Artist Fellowship from the NJ State Council on the arts and two of her paintings were selected for the Lunar Codex, a project that sent images of art from earth to the moon.
www.eileen-kennedy.com @eileenkennedyartist
$4,000 *
Price subject to sales tax.
