Jeffrey Kenney
Thorn and Heap, 2023
acrylic stamped newsprint collaged on drawing paper 42” x 66”

Thorn and Heap uses a collage method involving stamped forms on newsprint, which are then recomposed onto a larger substrate. The image employs three stamp “systems” or “fonts” — variations of recurring shapes: bold thorns, four thin arcs, and short wavy lines. These motifs consciously combine elements of gothic tracery with early modernist graphic illustration. The resulting marks tessellate, grow, and connect in irregular, pattern-like formations.

The work draws on the woodcut traditions of Pre-Raphaelites such as Edward Burne-Jones and William Morris, as well as the later, more stylized graphics of Aubrey Beardsley. I’m interested in a mark-making vocabulary that creates visual density and reinterprets the symbolic and aesthetic language of these historical sources. The primary reference in Thorn and Heap is Burne-Jones’s The Sleeping Beauty (also known as Briar Rose), which depicts multiple figures in passive, romantic repose, encircled by thorny vines. I focus on the interplay of neglect, passivity, entrapment, and entanglement suggested by the painting and its underlying narrative.

In Thorn and Heap, the figures form a dense, knotted mass—more puzzle than tableau. I intentionally avoided decorative or narrative clarity. The faces, hands, and feet are rendered with stamp blocks designed to suggest distortion: ugliness, awkwardness, or even disease. This group is tightly bound, physically and symbolically. The briars produce no roses. They are the product of neglect and collective inertia.