Michael Kenny

Description

Set with care in a quiet corner of the copse, the circular Purbeck stone base for In Secrecy and Solitude takes the place of the gallery floor. Indoors Kenny would have drawn concentric circles on the floor in which to position three geometric forms at random. Here they are placed in considered relationship with the lines incised in the stone base. The sculpture is calm, balanced and harmonious, the physical form giving truth to the spiritual.

Kenny has been working with Portland stone since the early 1980s. He particularly enjoys the contrast between white limestones, and the colourful greens and soft golden browns of Hornton stone which comes from the Midlands, near Banbury, and others which give variety in texture, colour and finish.

Geometry is put to use in many ways in Michael Kenny's sculpture: to define shape in line and volume, to achieve balance and proportion and through this a spirituality, as architects in classical Greece and artists of the Renaissance have done. Line brings together the diverse elements in his sculpture, and the geometry gives tranquillity and calmness.

The notion of movement in such quiet and still work can be found in Kenny's use of the diagonal, a line rising between the horizontal and vertical which might also be the line which holds the composition of the whole in balance.