MFA Painting and Drawing, Photography University of North Texas
Gloria Kenyon
Reciprocity
Reciprocity refers to mutual dependence, action, or influence, and photographically the term indicates the relationship between the intensity and duration of light. In this work, reciprocity exists regarding the interdependence of photographic and painting practices and is informed by color negative film and leftover paint on palettes.
I am intrigued by the appearance of color negatives and have sourced my images for the paintings from my own collection of film. I work in a manner that parallels the processing of color film; I paint the image in monochrome first (the silver in film development) and then layer translucent color glazes (the dyes in color film development), as well as a glaze that is similar in color to the orange mask on color film. The paintings are a tribute to a process that has all but vanished, and although I began the series with no intention of the work being about my emotional or personal life, it has come to represent my own vanished past since most of my film is of my young family and friends.
The photographic work consists of hand colored and edited inkjet prints of images sourced from photographs of paint (leftover on palettes from my paintings), cell phone photographs, and re-photographed color negatives. The painting and photographic processes in these works are intertwined in process, history, and personal experience.
Biography
Born in Queens, New York, Gloria Kenyon spent her childhood on Long Island and moved to North Texas as a teenager where she continues to reside. She earned both her BFA and MFA from the University of North Texas and has been an artist her entire life and educator most of her adult life, teaching at University of North Texas, Bishop Lynch High School, Tarrant County College, and the Hockaday School. She also held a position as computer animator at Reunion Arena in Dallas for six years. Currently working exclusively in painting and photography, Kenyon also spent time as a performance artist and installation artist earlier in her career. Kenyon’s work has been exhibited at the Dallas Video Festival, the Trammel Crow Center, Alternate Gallery, 500X, Plaza of the Americas, the Dallas Museum of Art, and the Fort Worth Community Arts Center. Her most recent body of work explores the interrelationships between photography and painting, giving a serious conceptual nod to Post Impressionism and to Pictorialism—painting with photographic elements and photography with painterly elements.