Grandeur of the Everyday: The Paintings of Dale Kennington

128 Pages·2017·18.004 MB·English

by  Dale Kennington

Grandeur of the Everyday
THE UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA PRESS • TUSCALOOSA
G R A N D E U R E V E RY DAY
of the
The Paintings of
D A L E K E N N I N G T O N
INTRODUCTION BY DANIEL WHITE • INTERVIEW BY KRISTEN MILLER ZOHN • ESSAY BY REBECCA BRANTLEY
The University of Alabama Press
Tuscaloosa, Alabama 35487-0380
uapress.ua.edu
Copyright © 2017 by the University of Alabama Press
All rights reserved
Inquiries about reproducing material from this work should be
addressed to the University of Alabama Press
Typefaces: Adobe Garamond and Museo Sans
Cover image: Dale Kennington, Their Last Night, oil on canvas,
62 x 86 in., 2013
Cover design: Michele Myatt Quinn
Publication made possible in part through the generous support
of the College of Arts and Sciences, The University of Alabama
Cataloging-in-Publication data is available from the Library of Congress
ISBN: 978-0-8173-1975-5
E-ISBN: 978-0-8173-9168-3
CONTENTS
Introduction
Daniel White 1
Intuition, Observation, Invention, Ambivalence:
A Conversation with Dale Kennington
Kristen Miller Zohn 9
Common Rituals: The Paintings of Dale Kennington
Rebecca Brantley 15
Artist Statement
Dale Kennington 25
Paintings 27
Selected Exhibitions, Collections, and Awards 115
Selected Bibliography 119
Contributors 121

Introduction
Dale Kennington is an artist whose work has stretched across and process. Soon, however, we discussed her well-traveled life, her
many decades of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. She has a sig- family, and we enjoyed swapping richly colored stories. In the South,
nificant amount of work in private collections and many notable public telling stories makes people fast friends.
collections of art throughout the Southeast. Kennington calls her paint- Kennington was born in the winter — January 24, 1935, to be
ings “merged memories,” even likening them to myths. Her body of exact — to Edward Karow Wilson and Lucile Hughes Wilson. Her time
work is Contemporary Realism, and has the human regard of Region- as a Savannah native was quite short, and at the age of six months, her
alism, but I would be doing a disservice to the artist to try and box her parents moved to Dothan, Alabama. The earliest childhood memory
in so easily. This is the appeal to me of Kennington’s artwork: it is at Kennington has of making art took place in her bedroom. She recalled
once familiar and yet defies specific place, clear but dense in its content. her bedroom had crown molding that wrapped around the room. At
As I have learned about Dale Kennington over the last four years, the the age of five, she would line up all the drawings she created and ad-
work and the artist are a direct extension of one another. She extended mire them. When there was no room left, she decided to wallpaper her
an invitation to me into her life, getting to know her, her work, how closet with her drawings. Her drawings were reproduced from comic
she painted and created an idea. For context to the reader, the follow- books: an interesting fact, showing that even from a young age, she was
ing paragraphs are merged memories of phone conversations, personal concerned with observation.
visits, emails, her artist statements, and personal writings of her philos- When I posed the question often posed to any individual who chose
ophy on her subject matter. I have a trained background in studio art, a creative life, “Did your parents appreciate and support your efforts?”
and these exchanges are, first and foremost, between one painter talking Kennington recalled that her family enjoyed her drawings, as a par-
to another painter about painting. Initially we talked about technique ent would with any of their children. However, like her, they never
1
dreamed her art would develop into a full painting career. That was her paintbrushes down, but it would not be long before she brought
never the plan, but like most plans, they will come as they will. Our her easel back to the forefront of her life.
destiny chooses us. Kennington was fortunate in the fact that she had full-time help rais-
Kennington recalls that later in her college years, a young lady was ing her children. This allowed her a lot of free time, and, as was the so-
only offered a narrow path of studies to choose from. She began col- cial norm, she filled it with social clubs, bridge clubs, and the like. The
lege in 1953, before the civil rights era, and long before equality in the irony is it was these activities that drove her back to the easel. In our
workplace. When she arrived as a freshman at Huntingdon College in conversations, she confessed that she was “bored to tears.” The problem
Montgomery, Alabama, the four majors offered for young women were she had with these activities is that they became a complete distraction
nursing, teaching, home economics, and art. Faced with limited choic- from the studio and had to go.
es, she chose the path most familiar: art. After a year at Huntingdon, So, she made a plan. She asked all the mothers in her neighborhood
she transferred to the University of Alabama. During this time, her par- to bring their children over to sit for a portrait. One by one they came
ents told her that she could not marry her future husband Don until over, and soon the hallway outside her studio door was lined with chil-
she had graduated from college. This request only accelerated her stud- dren. This was not done out of joyful charity, it was to bring her paint-
ies, and in 1956 she graduated from the University of Alabama with a ing skills back to the level she knew they needed to be. She quickly
bachelor of arts in art history and design. learned that the other children would stand at the door to poke and jibe
In August 1956, newly married, she followed her husband Don the one sitting for a portrait. It must have been quite the scene, with all
to Auburn University, east of Montgomery, Alabama. When she ar- the makings for a good Normal Rockwell illustration. She made adjust-
rived on campus, she contacted the art department for an interview ments, scheduling the children to come after school so they could watch
hoping she would be able to attend some art classes. After the facul- TV while she drew and painted them. This also proved problematic, she
ty looked at her portfolio, they quickly decided they would like her soon discovered, as the children would come across in the portrait, as
to teach instead. She was hired as an adjunct professor and taught she put it, “bug eyed and with their mouths open.”
classes for the art department. This was an enriching experience for Kennington’s portraits proved to be a powerful advertisement. Word
the young artist, and she took classes earning her teaching certificate. of mouth soon spread, as they say in the South. Living in Dothan, Ala-
After her husband’s graduation, they started their new life in Dothan, bama, also happened to be of benefit for her. Dothan, at the time, was
Alabama — a place she still calls home. Then, she began a family and a major thoroughfare for those traveling to the Gulf Coast. If someone
shifted her focus to raising her three children. She momentarily put saw one of her paintings and wanted a painting of their own, they could
2 GRANDEUR OF THE EVERYDAY
Abandoned, recto, installed, oil on wood panel, 93 x 144 in., 2002–2004
stop in to inquire. Over time, she had both in-town and out-of-town This was her consistent work schedule, which lasted over fifteen years
visitors making appointments for their child to perform the near im- and gave her considerable recognition as a portrait artist. Yet, at the
possible task of sitting still for a painter. Eventually, it grew into a year’s fifteen-year mark, she was looking for a gradual shift to something new.
worth of painting commitments. In conversations she explained the fol- Also during this time, she and her husband, Don, were spending half the
lowing schedule: paint one child per month, completing 12 portraits in year in Europe and half the year in the United States. To accommodate
a year, all from sitting, no photography. Although it created more work her lifestyle, Kennington developed a process. A scheduled child would sit
for her, she had more confidence in the observation process, and could with her for the initial sitting, then, after sketching the likeness onto the
more accurately record the personality of the child from direct sittings. canvas, she would continue working on her paintings while in Europe.
INTRODUCTION 3