Kenneth Nicholson: Fleshy Limb Filled Rectangles

Kenneth Nicholson’s exhibition “Fleshy Limb Filled Rectangles” featured oil paintings and drawings of figures and portraits, aggressively disassembled and collaged back together to create strangely fractured and evocative images of the human body. 

Kenneth Nicholson composes his artwork with a collage sensibility, piecing together his figures and portraits from fragments of imagery that combine to create a disjointed whole.  But from these chaotic beginnings he applies his meticulous skills in rendering and paint-handling, creating solid puzzle-like images with a tension between their deliberate construction and the random qualities of the collage.  Concerning his artwork, Kenneth states that “with my work, I explore the human body by disassembling and reanimating it via the process of the cut up. The resulting geometry of limbs, dissonant rhythms, and narrative insulations provides uncanny imagery both viscerally familiar and unsettling.”

Born in Latrobe Pennsylvania, Kenneth received his MFA from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 2016.  He currently teaches as an adjunct instructor at University of Pittsburgh at Greensburg, Seton Hill University, and Westmoreland County Community College.  His work has been exhibited in Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Ohio, Washington DC, New Jersey, and New York.