Torn to bits

I was awestruck as I entered the Nevada State Library and Archives building in Carson City. Barbara Gene Kenyon’s Adventures in Acrylics squashed my notion of what a collage should be.

Kenyon’s works twisted my view of cutout pictures glued onto construction paper into a brand new conception of this seemingly juvenile art form. Her creations, described as mixed-media acrylic painting and torn-art collage mosaic, brightened the surrounding dullness of the gallery space. I discovered a rich and vibrant approach to sharing images with the world.

Kenyon blends her paint with colorful pictures of real characters and objects. Women, fruit, flowers, vases, chickens and nature adorn her works. Shapes and colors are intricately woven as if made solely for the paintings.

I met Kenyon at the state library gallery where she showed me around and gave me a tour of her art.

Kenyon’s fascination with fashion at a young age led her to paint striking women. Her daughter, Julie, is her inspiration and model. The females in her works are reflections of Julie, whose appearance changes, from piece to piece, only in the color of her hair. The painting “Julie” is made entirely of torn pieces from magazines and contains only two flecks of real paint—the woman’s blue eyes, which softly gaze outside the framed border.

In approaching a new piece, Kenyon said she starts with the idea, then prepares black and white sketches. She challenges herself to use different color pallets on each painting. Her favorite pallet is orange, green and purple.

“The decision on my color pallet sets the mood,” she explained.

Kenyon uses learned techniques on each painting. The method of fracturing appears in the piece “Cracked Eggs,” which looks almost like a shattered window in which small slivers of glass form geometric triangles. Images seem to hide behind, yet also between, the triangular shapes.

Upon a painting’s completion, Kenyon said she adds layers of washes until she “feels a richness and depth to the picture.”

Another collage that caught my attention was “Nineteen Twenty Two.” In this piece, a woman’s face is surrounded by authentic copies of the front page of the New York Times from 1922.

“I like combinations of things that don’t go together; you pull them together with color,” Barbara explained.

I was drawn to “Elephants"—a mixed-media, acrylic painting that portrays six purple elephants. The background was a swirling mixture of green, pink and orange. Kenyon’s pieces are for sale, and I desperately wanted to take this one home. I wondered how an elephant painting might fit into my eclectic home décor.

Kenyon has been painting with acrylic for 40 years, and she told me her best teacher has been practice. Her advice to aspiring artists is to do something for their art and to stay creative every day.

Kenyon stays creative by teaching others. Her goals are to be a “giving teacher and a happy artist.” She will teach at St. Mary’s Art Center in Virginia City during the end of August. Her invitation to potential students is to “explore acrylic and enjoy Virginia City.”

“I aim to teach as much as can be crammed into five days, eight hours a day," Kenyon said.