Doris Colbert Kennedy
How can reality be defined? What is our place in the universe? These existentialist questions are all explored in Doris Colbert Kennedy’s bold, colorful paintings.
It’s not every day you find art inspired by ideas such as quantum physics and string theory. Kennedy approaches her paintings, which she describes as reflections of God, as a visual perception of the energy that surrounds us and flows through us all. Her work depicts the deepest levels of matter, from particles, atoms, and dark matter to the waves of energy that the human eyes can’t see. “My interests have taken me to a reality deeper than the human forms that I painted, deeper than the surfaces of material things, into a reality that our eyes cannot see,” she says.
Kennedy classifies her work as “intuitive realism,” and feels her art is more realistic than photographic realism. This is a truly interesting viewpoint as most would classify her work as abstract, but it seems like that is one of the points she is trying to make—whether we are looking at art or at life, what your individual experience is depends almost entirely on your perception. Though she wants people to find their own meaning in her art, she also enjoys sharing her interpretation of a deeper reality with viewers, if they are interested in hearing her thoughts.
Kennedy’s approach to painting is as unconventional as her subject matter. She begins by looking at her canvas for hours, waiting for the first stroke to come to her. “Continuing to look and to let the painting tell me where to go is the longest and most significant aspect of the process,” she says.
Though she spent her childhood years in Washington, D.C., Kennedy credits the place she really “grew up” to be the rainforest of Ghana, where she was separated from all things familiar. She didn’t have the luxury of dinner, and she found that to be liberating. “I was inclined to simply choose without anguish, recognizing the power of immediate self-definition,” she says.
Kennedy’s plans for the future? “Paint. And paint. And paint.”
words: Daniela Weinapple
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