Michael Kennaugh - Broken Bridge

MICHAEL KENNAUGH BROKEN BRIDGE

MICHAEL KENNAUGH

BROKEN BRIDGE

JANUARY 10 – FEBRUARY 21, 2026

Moody Gallery is proud to present Broken Bridge, an exhibition of recent oil paintings and works on paper by Michael Kennaugh. Broken Bridge, Kennaugh’s eleventh solo show at the gallery since 2002, was on view January 10 – February 21, 2026.

Michael Kennaugh’s latest non-representational, geometric compositions are lively, highly structured, and obliquely poetic. These works, rendered in a mostly muted, somber palette, feature compactly arranged shapes. Each dense, grid-like composition is teeming with structures and forms that interlock with precision. However, they are not the product of calculations or numerous preparatory studies. Rather, the artist’s process is intuitive. Reliant on instinct and spontaneity, Kennaugh has little interest in traditional mimesis or referential replication. Instead, through his art making, Kennaugh strives to create a visual language of his own, a world unto itself. To do so, he paints, overpaints, works, and reworks his compositions to completion. Though his compositions are geometrically founded, Kennaugh does not strive to hide the fact that they are human made. Rather than aiming for a depersonalized, fully industrial style, Kennaugh employs expressive brushwork and leaves traces of his process, his starts, stops, edits, and changes. Kennaugh’s current style draws and builds upon a variant of modernist painting that was originated by Cézanne and carried through the twentieth century to the present day by countless luminaries. And though Kennaugh has evidently digested the artistic innovations of Cézanne, Picasso, Klee, Gorky, Braque, and more, his style is resolutely vital, fresh, and highly personal. Kennaugh embraces the sensuous capabilities of non-representational painting and does not shy away from the evocative effects of abstract art. He christens his compositions, products of the artist’s emotions and experiences, with poetic, suggestive titles, sometimes appropriated from popular culture, thus adding a further layer of meaning to each work.

Michael Kennaugh (b. Wyoming, 1964) currently lives and works in Houston, Texas. Raised in Southeast Texas, Kennaugh earned a B.F.A. degree from Lamar University (1986) and a M.F.A. in painting from the University of North Texas (1990). Kennaugh also attended The American College of Switzerland in Leysin (1990) and participated in an artist residency at the William Flanagan Memorial Creative Persons Center in Montauk, Long Island (1996). Today, Kennaugh’s art can be found in the permanent collections of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the Art Museum of Southeast Texas, the Houston Airport System, Tyler Museum of Art, Mobile Museum of Art, and Lamar University.

MICHAEL KENNAUGH – BROKEN BRIDGE

by Elliot Penn

Broken Bridge, an exhibition of recent oil paintings and works on paper by Michael Kennaugh, opened at Moody Gallery on January 10, 2026. “You don’t invent anything. You deviate from it.” the artist shared in his brief remarks at the opening. According to Kennaugh, “Art history plays such a major part in my work. It really does. It’s hard to make a decent painting. But to make one without the knowledge of art history, you’re really swinging, not connecting.” The pictures that compose Broken Bridge are informed by tradition and the diverse styles of art history. However, as the show’s press release suggests, despite their ties to the art-historical canon, Kennaugh’s latest artworks are resolutely vital, fresh, personal, and experimental. For Broken Bridge, Kennaugh gracefully balances art-historical influences with ingenuity, creativity, and personal expression.

Michael Kennaugh (b. Wyoming, 1964) currently lives and works in Houston, Texas. Broken Bridge is Kennaugh’s eleventh solo show with Moody Gallery. Since showing with Moody Gallery, a relationship that formally began in 2001, Kennaugh’s production has been predominantly nonrepresentational, though his approach to this mode of painting has evolved over the years. Previously, Kennaugh’s style was overtly lyrical, rhythmic, richly colored, and gestural. In his own words, he was focused on creating “shallow, flat space with big, colorful passages of shape.” Today, he employs a grid to structure his compositions, each one densely filled with forms and shapes that interlock or adjoin harmoniously. His palette, once filled with vivid greens and vibrant reds, has grown subdued, somber, and heavily achromatic. For evidence of this evolution, compare The Illustrated Man, painted in 2018, to Gulf of Mexico, which dates to last year.

Notwithstanding these numerous changes, Kennaugh’s hand, his painterly touch, remains expressive. Kennaugh does not strive for an industrial effect or a sleek, refined appearance in his recent abstract canvases and works on paper. Instead, he leaves traces of his artistic process, his starts, stops, edits, changes, and adjustments. It is necessary to stress that abstract, in Kennaugh’s case, does not refer to the fracturing of a motif from the visible world into a discrete, stylized entity, recognizable in the end for its parts as in early Cubist pictures. Nor is Kennaugh’s abstract style a recapitulation of Piet Mondrian’s nonobjective aesthetic theories. Rather, Kennaugh’s abstract style reflects life and nature. Namely, it mirrors Kennaugh’s existence, environments, and doings. Kennaugh is unique among artists in that he makes no attempt to conceal, shroud, or misdirect attention away from this psychological mirroring. As an artist, he wears his heart on his sleeve. “The beautiful thing about being an artist is that it never ends, you’re always responding to life…” Kennaugh gratefully acknowledges.

For all their shared qualities, the artworks included in Broken Bridge are hardly identical, nor do they all achieve the same pictorial or visual effects. Some compositions, Periscope, Sun and Shadow, Lighthouse, When the Deal Goes Down, and many of the works on paper, feature lively brushwork. These pictures, with their swaths of white pigment, which appear like patina or weathering, and painterly finishes, suggest energy, movement, dynamism, and life. In comparison, paintings like Gulf of Mexico, A Sea of Riddles, and

Across the Water are tranquil, harmonious, perspectively flat, and more exactingly balanced. Additionally, certain paintings more explicitly convey illusionistic depth. Whereas Gulf of Mexico has minimal depth, primarily evident in the bright blue segments in the upper left and right corners, seemingly peeking out behind the dense configuration of black, sludgy grey, and mustard forms, paintings like In the Darkness of the Room, Get Behind the Mule, and Arrow are staged in a manner that more closely mimics or references inhabitable space and the effects of light

Kennaugh spent just shy of three years working on the body of work for Broken Bridge. Describing his process, he states, “Color came late. The color grounds the grid in the real world. Blues and greens… people can connect that with water, grass, air, landscape… color links these (works) to the physical world in a way.” He began these compositions with black pigment against a white ground, filling in the darkest elements of the grid first. Slowly and intuitively, Kennaugh constructed shapes, formed layers, and added values to each composition. With grey, brown, and beige tones, he built depth and articulated forms in space. Having started with a non-naturalistic palette, Kennaugh invited nature back into his works through the process of painting. Though they only make up a small fraction of each composition, and despite their unnatural angularity, Kennaugh’s bright blue, burnt yellow, vibrant red, and earthy green shapes anchor

each work in the visible, natural world. “The less color I used, the more powerful it became.” he comments. Kennaugh chose to adopt this restrained palette, using color subtly, efficiently, and effectively, after studying the floral still life paintings of Édouard Manet. “It is only at the very end that he (Manet) punched in a red rose or a green leaf… There is a very traditional way that I am building these paintings.” he explains.

In the Darkness of the Room, 2025, oil on canvas, 14” x 20” (diptych, 14” x 10” each panel)

In 2015, Kennaugh wrote, “Making work is an organic thing. It hinges on my experiences of joy and pain, love and loss.” More recently, Kennaugh is still working in an intuitive, emotionally driven manner. Intuition, in the case of Kennaugh’s painterly process, is the implementation of experience gained over the course of time. Kennaugh intuits each painterly decision based on the specific results of prior action. He knows how it feels to put his entire life into his art and how to paint without intellectualizing the process. His “experiences of joy and pain, love and loss” propel him to paint and are represented in the results.

Like a diary or clock, Kennaugh’s newest work gives the passing of time a lasting, visible aesthetic. Like keeping a diary, Kennaugh painted day after day for years, pouring himself, his moods, feelings, emotions, thoughts, and ideas, into each composition. For Kennaugh, just as a clock tells or tracks time, color can do the same. He became fully aware of color’s ability to convey time in 1986 after a conversation with John Nicholson, a noted Manx watercolorist and member of the Royal Academy. Kennaugh recalled in 2015, “He told me to never clean my palette… I thought about that for a while and realized that his color

represented time.” If the colors of nature found throughout the works in Broken Bridge are not sufficient proof of Kennaugh “responding to life,” he has christened these compositions with poetic, evocative titles. Instead of pictures with numerical or otherwise vague and impersonal titles, his titles reference the lyrics of Bob Dylan and Billy Joe Shaver, tree species, and bodies of water. Kennaugh’s titles, beyond adding a layer of meaning to each abstract artwork, further tie each composition to nature, reality, and the human experience.

Contemplating the role of tradition in the creative process, Arshile Gorky wrote in 1947, “The soloist can emerge only after having participated in the group dance.” Despite self-describing as a loner who tends to paint by himself and mostly avoids outside opinions while working, Kennaugh has plenty of experience participating in “the group dance.” As previously illustrated by his experience meeting John Nicholson, throughout his life, Kennaugh has worked closely with and learned important lessons from other painters. Contemporaneously, he keeps richly illustrated art books on hand in his studio. While working on the pictures for Broken Bridge, he regularly consulted the art of Pablo Picasso, Diego Velázquez, and Eduardo Chillida.

Kennaugh’s art-historical influences are far-ranging. Given the nonrepresentational nature of his art and his use of the grid, there are undeniable affinities between Kennaugh and numerous modernist masters. Previous writers, discussing former incarnations of Kennaugh’s artistic vision and process, invoked figures including Jackson Pollock, Helen Frankenthaler, and Willem de Kooning. While the list of Kennaugh’s artistic influences could be amended an infinite number of times and ways, it is critically important to recognize Kennaugh as equal parts student of art history and creative, expressive, pioneering artist. Rather than simply restating or parroting familiar styles, Kennaugh, a curiously minded and sincere painter, learns the lessons of his forbearers, synthesizes them, and implements them in his own unique, distinctly personal way. For visitors, Broken Bridge offers the opportunity to view abstract artworks that are both reflective of lived experiences and informed by tradition. In Kennaugh’s case, these two factors, lived experience and tradition, are not in opposition. Instead, Kennaugh engages with tradition as a living language, one that can be articulated, expanded upon, deviated from, or otherwise modified in the present.

In the Dust Where I Lay, 2025, oil on canvas, 30” x 36”

Across the Water, 2025, oil on canvas, 30” x 36”

In the Darkness of the Room, 2025, oil on canvas, 14” x 20” (diptych, each panel 14” x 10”)

If Not for You, 2025, oil on canvas, 12” x 9”

Among the Stars, 2025, acrylic and watercolor on paper, 22” x 30”

MICHAEL KENNAUGH

Born: Casper, Wyoming, 1964

Currently lives and works in Houston, Texas

EDUCATION

1990 M.F.A., University of North Texas, Denton, Texas

Leysin American School, Leysin, Switzerland

1986 B.F.A., Lamar University, Beaumont, Texas

AWARDS AND HONORS

1996 Residency, The William Flanagan Memorial Creative Persons Center, Montauk, New York

1988 Second Place, Dishman National Competition, Lamar University, Beaumont, Texas

1987 First Place, Dishman National Competition, Lamar University, Beaumont, Texas

TEACHING EXPERIENCE

2007 Glassell School of Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Instructor

2005 Glassell School of Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Instructor

1990 University of North Texas, Denton, Texas, Teacher Adjunct

1987 Gold Coast Art League, Beaumont, Texas, Painting Instructor

1984-87 Lamar University, Beaumont, Texas, Student Assistant

LECTURES

2006 Artist's Eye, Lecture on Mondrian, Menil Collection

2005 “Talking About Contemporary Art”, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas

2001 Artist Spotlight, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas

2000 Lawndale Art and Performance Center, Houston, Texas

1999 Glassell School, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas

Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, Texas

1998 University Gallery, Baylor University, Waco, Texas

1990 Leysin American School, Leysin, Switzerland

SOLO EXHIBITIONS

2026 “Broken Bridge”, Moody Gallery, Houston, Texas

2023 “Telling the Bees”, Moody Gallery, Houston, Texas

2022 “Selected Works by Michael Kennaugh”, Beeville Art Museum, Beeville, Texas

2021 “Black Bird”, Moody Gallery, Houston, Texas

2018 “Driving to Eden”, Moody Gallery, Houston, Texas

2016 “It Was a Fine Idea at the Time”, Moody Gallery, Houston, Texas “Locus in Quo”, Galveston Arts Center, Galveston Texas

2015 “Locus in Quo”, Art Museum of Southeast Texas, Beaumont, Texas (catalogue)

2013 “New Work: Paintings, Drawings, and Sculptures”, Moody Gallery, Houston, Texas

2012 “Zero Road”, Moody Gallery, Houston, Texas

2010 “The Camel’s Back”, Moody Gallery, Houston, Texas

2007 “Water and Stone”, Moody Gallery, Houston, Texas

2004 “Nexus”, Moody Gallery, Houston, Texas

2002

2000

“Haven”, Moody Gallery, Houston, Texas

“Monuments and Myths”, Lawndale Art and Performance Center, Houston, Texas

1998 “New Work”, Sally Sprout Gallery, Houston, Texas

1997 “Michael Kennaugh - Recent Work”, Galveston Arts Center, Galveston, Texas

1996 “Drawings and Paintings”, Sally Sprout Gallery, Houston, Texas

1990 Leysin American School, Leysin, Switzerland

“MFA Exhibition”, University of North Texas, Denton, Texas

Student Union Gallery, University of North Texas, Denton, Texas

GROUP EXHIBIONS

2025

“50th Anniversary Exhibition, Part II”, Moody Gallery, Houston, Texas

“50th Anniversary Exhibition, Part I”, Moody Gallery, Houston, Texas

“Staff Art Show 2025”, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas

“New To Town, Recent Acquisitions”, Tyler Museum of Art, Tyler, Texas 2024-25

“Target Texas: Studio Practice”, Art Museum of South Texas, Corpus Christi, Texas (exhibition catalogue)

“20x20, Honduras Threads”, Andrew Durham Gallery, Houston, Texas

2023 “MFAH Staff Art Show”, Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Houston, Texas

“Our Back Pages”, Dishman Art Museum, Lamar University, Beaumont, Texas 2021-22 “The Box Exhibition”, Hooks Epstein Gallery, Houston, Texas

2021 “MFAH Staff Art Show”, Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Houston, Texas

2020 “From the Vault: Selections from the Art Museum of Southeast Texas”, Tyler Museum of Art, Tyler, Texas

2019 “MFAH Staff Art Show”, Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Houston, Texas

2018 “Navigating Surface and Space: Pat Colville, Garland Fielder, Michael Kennaugh, Eduardo Portillo”, Williams Tower Gallery, Houston Texas, Curated by Sally Sprout

“Houston Artists: Gestural and Geometric Abstraction”, Mobile Museum of Art, Mobile, Alabama, Curated by Jim Edwards

2017 “Virgil Grotfeld, Ibsen Espada, Michael Kennaugh: Painter’ Painters”, Houston Baptist University, Contemporary Art Gallery, Houston, Texas

“Beaumont Collects: Works of Art from Southeast Texas Collectors, Dishman Art Museum, Lamar University, Beaumont, Texas

“Bring It All Back Home: Works of Art by Lamar University Alumni from the permanent collection of the Dishman Art Museum”, Dishman Art Museum, Lamar University, Beaumont, Texas

2016 “From Space to Field”, curated by Sculpture Month Houston, Site Gallery at The Silos at Sawyer Yards, Houston, Texas

"Twenty-Five: A Conclusion", Galveston Arts Center, Galveston, Texas, Curator: Clint Willour

2015-16 “40th Anniversary Exhibition”, Moody Gallery, Houston, Texas

2015 "Texas Abstract", Rudolph Blume Fine Art / ArtScan Gallery, Houston, Texas

“Texas Abstract, Modern | Contemporary”, Galveston Arts Center, Galveston, Texas, curated by Ken General

2013 “Editions”, Moody Gallery, Houston, Texas

2012 “In Plain Sight”, curated by Aaron Parazette, McClain Gallery, Houston, Texas

2011 “Working in the Abstract”, Glassell School of Art, Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Houston, Texas

“The Modernist Thread”, Williams Tower Gallery, Houston, Texas, curated by Sally Sprout

2010 “35 Years: Anniversary Exhibition”, Moody Gallery, Houston, Texas

“Aqueous Abstractions: Contemporary American Watercolors”, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas

2005 “Mind, Mark and Wit”, Williams Tower, Houston, Texas

2004 “Preparatory Works”, The Jung Center, Houston, Texas, curated by Clint Willour

“Abstract Concepts”, The Art Center, Stephen F. Austin University, curated by Clint Willour

2003 “Miniatures”, Hooks-Epstein Galleries, Houston, Texas

“Works by Michael Kennaugh and Kyle Young”, One City Centre Lobby, Houston, Texas

“The Potent Line”, Williams Tower Gallery, Houston, Texas

2002 “Southeast Texas Recollects”, Art Museum of Southeast Texas, Beaumont, Texas

2001 “The Glassell Auction”, Glassell School of Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas

“The Box Show”, Hooks Epstein Galleries, Houston, Texas

“Narratives”, HCCP, Houston, Texas

“Bibliolowtech”, Inman Gallery, Houston, Texas

2000 “Texas, Across State Lines”, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas

“Houston Area Show”, Blaffer Gallery, University of Houston, Houston, Texas

1999 “New York Collects”, Albright Knox Gallery, Buffalo, New York

“Four Painters”, Hong Kong Visual Arts Center, Hong Kong, China

“Six”, Kouros Gallery, New York, New York

1998 “Edward Albee Curates: 5 Artists”, Art League of Houston, Houston, Texas

“Michael Collins, Michael Kennaugh: Painters”, University Gallery, Baylor University, Waco, Texas

“Figure and the Chair”, Hooks Epstein Galleries, Houston, Texas

1997 “Defining the Figure”, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas

1996 “Classically Inspired”, Hooks Epstein Galleries, Houston, Texas

“Vernacular”, Lawndale Art and Performance Center, Houston, Texas

1995 “Drawing from Strength”, Transco Tower Gallery, Houston, Texas

1994 “Introductions”, Transco Tower Gallery, Houston, Texas

“The Second Arena-Ennial: Infinite Airport”, Dishman Art Gallery, Beaumont, Texas

“The Second Arena-Ennial: Infinite Airport”, 404 Fowler Warehouse, Houston, Texas

“TALA Benefit Auction”, Houston, Texas

1993 “Dia de los Muertos”, Lawndale Art and Performance Center, Houston, Texas

1992 Lawndale Art and Performance Center, Houston, Texas

1989 “University of North Texas Print Exhibition”, Odessa Junior College, Odessa, Texas

1988 “Dishman National Competition”, Lamar University, Beaumont, Texas; juror, Betty Moody, Moody Gallery, Houston, Texas

1987 “Dishman National Competition”, Lamar University, Beaumont, Texas; juror, Sheila Stewart, Museum of Southeast Texas, Beaumont, Texas

Allied Bank of Beaumont, Beaumont, Texas

1986 “Senior Exhibition”, Lamar University, Beaumont, Texas

“Friends of the Arts”, Lamar University, Beaumont, Texas

1985 “Friends of the Arts”, Lamar University, Beaumont, Texas

SELECTED PUBLIC COLLECTIONS

American General, Houston, Texas

Art Museum of South Texas, Corpus Christi, Texas

Art Museum of Southeast Texas, Beaumont, Texas

Bracewell Giulliani, San Antonio, Texas

Cheniere Energy, Houston, Texas

Duke Energy, Houston, Texas

Galaxy Macau, Macau, China

Houston Airport System, City of Houston

Iberia Bank, Houston, Texas

Lamar University, Beaumont, Texas

Mobile Museum of Art, Mobile, Alabama

The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas

Occidental Petroleum Corporation, Houston, Texas

Schiffer Hicks & Johnson, Houston, Texas

Tyler Museum of Art, Tyler, Texas

Porter Hedges, Houston, Texas

The Woodlands Corporation, The Woodlands, Texas

BROKEN BRIDGE

JANUARY 10 – FEBRUARY 21, 2026