About Robin Kenny

Robin grew up in Franklin, Tennessee, just south of Nashville, and currently resides there with her husband and two children.  Her artworks are patterned journal entries of life as a woman and mother.

After earning her Bachelor of Arts degree in Art from Carson-Newman College, she moved to Tallahassee, Florida to complete her Master of Fine Arts degree from Florida State University. Robin has shown around the country, most recently in Dallas, TX, and was most recently published in Candyfloss Magazine.  She worked for 2 years for the Artist/Mother Podcast as the Administrator.

I carefully select images from sources like toile fabrics, my own personal photos, and art history books, and intertwine them with my own marks. This intersection of past and present points to the fleeting nature of time. The silhouetted figures are both empty and full – disappearing into the past, and determining the future. Modern yet personal prints also spring forward amidst the historical toile patterns – my son’s car pajamas, lace from my daughter’s recital costumes, and painted wallpaper that references my childhood during the 1980’s and 1990’s

 I choose toile fabrics that depict scenes of middle class people living life – oblivious to the world around them. The people in them are carrying buckets, sitting in groups laughing, playing music, dancing, eating – only concerned with their insular world.  I infuse silhouettes of women and my own personal family photos to both reference this past I am a part of, and to disrupt it. This disruption comes through hot, contemporary pinks and teals as well as distortions of the toile patterns. The found antiqued frames, repurposed imagery, and repeated fabrics used in several of my works point to a history that is doomed, for better or worse, to repeat itself.

The juxtaposition of the wild South, complicated and tangled, with the proper South imagery of fine china and bowties, is a space worth exploring. Through self-portraited silhouettes reminiscent of 18th century cameos, I investigate my identity as a Southern woman by infusing southern flora, patterns, and color schemes with harsh, angled lines. These contrasting patterns point to my own feelings of inner conflict over the region in which I live – a domestic interior self-portrait.

Colors meander and float through washes of paint and defined patterns – submerging arrangements and structures. The complicated roles of a woman and a mother drip with beauty and intrude with softness. What has come before, as depicted in so many patterns of the past, is restructured and reimagined.

Use the form below to contact me for any inquiries you may have about my work.