A Portfolio of Colour Field Painting by CK Kennedy
Three Night Stripes, oil on canvas (three panels)
CK Kennedy is an artist based in Vancouver, BC. In their practice, CK explores the tradition of colour field painting, creating abstract paintings that focus on planes of colour and their interactions with each other across the canvas or other substrate.
Untitled (Additive Grid with Yellow Windows), oil on canvas
I really like the presence of CK’s artworks. Though the canvases are not particularly large, the artist tends to arrange them in groups to create monolithic expressions of bombastic colour that hold their own even in expansive white-walled gallery spaces. It’s really fascinating to look at these arrangements of paintings, especially when the individual paintings express the same pattern but with different colours each time. The movement that occurs as colours pop to the forefront or sink into the background as the viewer’s gaze flows across the artwork is an enthralling experience.
The artist also plays with perspective in some paintings, using straight lines in different lengths and colours to create a jarringly real sense of depth, like in Stripes and Bumps.