Lucid Vision Royal, 2023, Acrylic and oil pastel on paper, 9” x 12”
Poetic Justice Royal Kendrick Lamar, 2024, Acrylic and oil pastel on paper, 9” x 12”
High Fashion Royal, 2022, Acrylic and oil pastel on paper, 19” x 24”
Over the past four years, Marcus Imani Kennedy has produced an extensive series of velvety oil pastel and acrylic works on paper. Highly prolific in his practice, Kennedy, 33, has an effortless ability to marry the immediacy of drawing with the weight of painting.
Citing Tim Stone’s wobbly graphite grids as an inspiration, he initially adopted a similar basic framework, but completely reimagined it through his distinct vision and process. Foregoing any source imagery, Kennedy begins with a structural outline in oil pastel, frequently black. A nuanced mix of vibrant and dark colors instinctively follows. Working quickly, he typically completes at least one piece a day, in varying scales throughout the week. This established set of limitations affords freedom and endless possibilities, where repetition avoids becoming formulaic through gradual transitions and shifts in rhythm over hundreds of iterations. Kennedy’s pattern-based works from 2021 are populated with scallops, vibrating dots, slanting lines, and slender rectangles, evocative of textiles or Aboriginal Australian dot paintings. They are given direct and descriptive titles like Square Box With Shapes and Dots or Shapes Within Shapes. These early works rapidly developed into more complex, breakthrough abstractions that defined his characteristic style.
Kennedy’s approach to art-making feels strikingly similar to Stanley Whitney’s ongoing explorations of loosely stacked bricks of color. Much like the improvisational rhythmic “flow” that drives Kennedy’s painting process, Whitney describes color selection as an intuitive “call-and-response. One color calls forth another.” Their work titles also both frequently reference musicians and song titles, poetic phrases providing insight into their current interests or focus. Viewers might feel compelled to internally replay a mentioned song as hazy, associated memories begin to surface. While Whitney is known for listening to Miles Davis and Ornette Coleman records in the studio, Kennedy opts for go-to radio stations that offer an eclectic range of genres: jazz, R&B, reggae, bossa nova, hip hop, classic rock, and gospel, among others.
In High Fashion Royal (2022), each irregular shape appears to be self-contained, yet is neither entirely isolated from or merging with others. Boundaries lack rigidity. This lends it an uncanny sense of movement and elasticity, transforming from something static into something living. The internal logic determining its arrangement feels elusive, as if each form is a fragment of a larger whole, a puzzle that never quite resolves itself.
Surface quality variations in Lucid Vision Royal (2023) dynamically alternate between thin washes, vigorous brushwork, and texture verging on impasto. Imperfections in the negative space and margins are equally significant; Kennedy isn’t precious about the paper’s pristine surface or his materials - smudges, fingerprints, drips, and splashes are overtly visible. Pairing this spontaneity with formal simplicity creates a tension - which animates the work - between order and chaos, containment and release.
In most recent works, Kennedy’s central box outline has vanished, while stray dots and rounded shapes have begun to gradually reappear. The structure of Poetic Justice Royal Kendrick Lamar (2024) is dense, contracted, and crowds the edges of the paper. Intermittent passages present multiple colors within singular asymmetrical triangles and segments. The forceful pressure of Kennedy’s hand creates buttery pastel ridges, flecked with multicolored bits left behind. Hovering slightly above the bottom edge, a bubble-like ellipse cushions an eighth note (a recently introduced motif).
For Kennedy, music is ever-present. In this sense, his works become a visual score of experience: an organic flow of thoughts and memories, moments of rest, bursts of activity, stretches of time when not much happens, yet everything happens. His work reflects a sense of urgency and vitality - announcing his presence without explanation, filling space with color without asking for permission.
Andreana Donahue
This essay (in addition to other written contributions by both Donahue and Ortiz) is included in Twenty-five, a publication commemorating the twenty-fifth anniversary of Chicago progressive art studio Arts of Life.