Two Geometric Ideas, oil on canvas

Vancouver-based artist Christann Kennedy uses oil, acrylic, and silkscreen techniques to create abstract geometric images that utilize color theory to great effect. The artist’s works are heavily focused on composition, with special attention paid to the points where different hues meet or interact.

 
Untitled (Pink with Portal), oil on canvas

I enjoy the way Christann uses color to create a sense of volume in her works. The artist’s knowledge of how colors play with one another on a picture plane is always in the forefront, regardless of the forms or materials she’s working with. Gradually lightening tones of similar colors, Christann creates the illusion of three-dimensional shape. By slightly blending the edges of darker colors out toward the background of a canvas, she creates shadow, the suggestion that there might be something behind an abstract and purely painterly form.

The artist's gallery of Expanded Painting

I also appreciate the way that Christann uses titles to give her viewers a jumping-off point on her works. Pieces with relatively simple compositions take on extra dimensions of symbolic meaning when viewed in conjunction with a simple but revelatory title.

Triangle Lozenges, watercolor and gouche on cotton rag paper