Removing the Layers

Trent Kendrick
Removing the Layers - 2026
Oil on canvas 16x20
 
Removing the Layers frames much of what this body of work is trying to do.
 
The background is built in layers — painted, scraped away, and reworked again and again until it holds a kind of vintage weight, like something that's been lived with rather than finished in one sitting. Over that ground, the figure is painted with a palette knife, broad and expressive, more suggestion than description. Up close, the strokes barely resolve into a body at all. Step back, and it comes together — a man caught mid-motion, pulling his shirt loose overhead.
 
That's the tension the piece runs on: closeness that reads as abstraction, distance that reads as figure.
 
Framed in a dark oak aluminum floating frame, ready to hang.
 
Original oil painting. One of a kind