Hudson Valley-based painter Abe Kenny works within one of art history’s oldest traditions: the painted still life. Since the Dutch Golden Age, artists have used food to explore themes of abundance, mortality and the passage of time, and Kenny’s approach to this subject likewise goes beyond mere documentation. Diagnosed with celiac disease in 2021, she has developed a deeply personal connection to food—not just as a source of sustenance but as a cultural artifact that carries history and meaning. “We lived near St. Lawrence Market, and while I was shopping, I saw that it was really beautiful,” she told the Observer. Initially inspired to draw her products from the market, food eventually became a lens through which she could think about memory, tradition and personal identity. Her condition made participating in some rituals difficult, and this feeling of exclusion heightened her awareness of the cultural and historical significance that food held, prompting her to explore it in her artwork. Food, she says, can be a container for bigger ideas.
Over time, her art—which has been shown at Morgan Lehman Gallery in New York City, Color Works in Troy, New York, and the RISD Museum in Providence, among other places—has shifted from a superficial exploration of food and memory to a more broad and nuanced investigation of the connections between culture, context, and personal history. Her process is a complex mix of personal history and artistic exploration, often using her family recipes as a starting point. The process of drawing not only the dishes but also the recipe cards themselves allowed Kenny to connect with the memory of her grandmother. While drawing, she found herself decoding hidden aspects of her grandmother’s life and personality, discovering a deeper side of herself that she had never fully understood before. The worn, often weathered paper on which recipes were written—sometimes accompanied by coffee stains or handwritten notes to family members—added layers of meaning, reflecting not only the recipes themselves, but the person behind them.
What began with a focus on family recipes expands into a broader exploration of the forces that shape those recipes, the cultural history embedded in them and the way they connect people across generations. Those curious to see her work in person can visit her upcoming solo show at Main Projects in Richmond opening June 4, or see her work in a group show at Morgan Lehman Gallery opening the following week on June 11. Not long ago, we caught up with Kenny to ask about memory, paint-making, and what a recipe can reveal about life.
You explore recipes as part of your process, and may make a recipe several times before painting it. Why?
I have a few different ways to find or create reference images. I have all of my grandmother’s recipes, many of them handwritten, so I’ve been working on them and drawing them. In some cases, instead of drawing directly from a recipe, I prepare a meal and create a still image, photographing it several times and stitching the images together in Photoshop to create a composition that reflects the perspective I want to highlight. This way, I can show relationships between things. I’m actually working on a new idea based on my Italian grandmother’s recipes. I will be making a red sauce that my mother taught me and one of my grandmother’s recipes. We’ll be setting the scene with her stuff and some weird items I found on eBay, which I’ll photograph before creating the painting.
What about drawing the recipes themselves? This is something I’ve never seen before.
I started drawing recipes shortly after my grandmother died. She was an important person in my life, and when she died, I had all these recipes, and I didn’t know what to do with them. I wanted to do something with them, so I started drawing them. It seemed like a way to decipher it, see a side of her that I didn’t always see, and almost embody her hand as I traced each word. I’ll draw it at a different scale than the original recipe, which distorts it somewhat. It was a fun way to get to know her better, and it gave me peace. She also found that many of the recipes were written on old paper, such as emails to her sisters or printed articles. It was cool to see what she was looking at at the time. Some recipes even had coffee stains or other signs of life, and I would paint both sides to capture that essence. It’s a way for me to delve into someone else’s experience and bring it to life through my practice.
You make your own dyes and paints. Can you tell me more about that?
I make most of my own paints. I use a system where I mix pigments, either dispersed or as dry pigment, with an acrylic binder. This gives me a lot of control over the texture and finish of my paints. I can make it super shiny, matte, or really saturated, depending on what I need to draw. I also teach materials and techniques, which allows me to share this process with others. It’s interesting because it allows me to get out of the box and explore different things that I wouldn’t normally use in my paintings. I also make oil paints, but I don’t use them in my own work. However, I love teaching my students how to make it because it gives them a deeper understanding of what goes into the materials they use.
You are also a lecturer in painting and drawing at SUNY Purchase College. How did your students react when you introduced paint making into your classes?
Some students get very excited when they realize how much they need to delve into it. Last semester, one student really embraced it, and it’s been amazing to watch his practice grow. Others find it boring, but walk away with a better appreciation for the material and the history behind it. They are beginning to realize how much care goes into the paint industry and how much history is behind something we take for granted. It’s fun to see them excited and messy, just enjoying the process.
How do you see your work evolving over time?
I think when I first started, I was a little superficial about it, and I didn’t quite understand what I was drawn to, but I knew there was something there. Over time, I became more focused on connections, looking at how things intersect. For a while, I was drawing trilogies, like comparing the same recipe from different sources. One might be my grandmother’s handwritten recipe, another from a Betty Crocker card, and a third from a cookbook. I’m going to create these pieces side by side. I’ve been playing around with collage and incorporating those little elements that attracted me to the recipes in the first place. Now, I’m thinking more broadly, not just about food, but about context as well.
More technical interviews
