Kenny McKendry

Ole Bendik, 2025

Oil on panel | Unframed: 25 x 20 x 0.5cm

‘Ole Bendik Madso is a man of intellect, experience, fun and artistic scaffolding. That is to say he has covered, developed, supported, set up and propped up artistic endeavours in theatre, art and literature from his ancient family island of Madso, at the very top of Norway, to the bottom south west of France where I came into his orbit some 12 or so years ago. He is currently working on his autobiography, Live Life Not Like Ole-Bendik, an account of self-determination and can-do attitude set out like a manifesto, with an appreciative take on intriguing historical past legacies. How does one paint such a man? Thinly as it turned out. Stop when the person comes through, which is what I did. Tempting as it is to layer, scrap back, rework, etc., I put my brush down early. Ole Bendik coming through.’ - Kenny McKendry.

Kenny McKendry, the only Irish member of the Royal Society of Portrait Painters, has been a fulltime artist for forty years. He believes that painting can be a haphazard occupation, in which hours, days and even weeks of continuous thought and application can be lost in a moment, ‘all in the pursuit of the right mark in the correct place and balanced between the mind’s eye and the correct disposition of representational form’. For McKendry, all picture types, including portraiture, still-life and landscape, are dictated not only by what the eye sees but by ‘a subliminal search for what lies within, beyond and eternally’.

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