18 May 2017

James Kinny: Roil & Hush

Matter & Light

Reviewed by Susan Post

James Kinny's paintings in "Roil and Hush" at Matter and Light are like beautiful scars, denoting suffering and repair, ugly truth and hidden beauty. Their record of the passage of time, in igneous layers of jeweled tones that erupt from Italian earth colors, evokes the gritty accretion of chewing gum on a sidewalk that has been transformed by Kinny's decisions into transcendent expressions of humanity.

Whatever the specific technique to achieve it may be, Kinny's work shares with that of figurative painters like Andrew Nash and Farrell Brickhouse the quality of an inner reality built from a struggle with their material - both psychological and literal - that nevertheless celebrates what it means to be alive. Kinny creates hard-fought and complex impasto surfaces that offer the viewer unexpected rewards, like coming upon a muddy pond in the woods overgrown with reeds and lily pads, and deciding to go for a swim.