Michael Kennaugh - Broken Bridge

MICHAEL KENNAUGH BROKEN BRIDGE

MICHAEL KENNAUGH BROKEN BRIDGE JANUARY 10 – FEBRUARY 21, 2026

Broken Bridge, Installation View, Moody Gallery, 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.

Broken Bridge, Installation View, Moody Gallery, 2026

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.

The Illustrated Man, 2018, oil on paper, 15” x 22 ½”

Gulf of Mexico, 2025, oil on canvas, 79 ½” x 98 ¼”

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.

Periscope, 2025, oil on canvas, 36” x 36”

When the Deal Goes Down, 2025, oil on canvas, 36” x 36 ¼”

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.

Across the Water, 2018, oil on canvas, 30” x 36”

A Sea of Riddles, 2025, oil on canvas, 12” x 9”

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.

Broken Bridge, Installation View, Moody Gallery, 2026

Gulf of Mexico, 2025, oil on canvas, 79 ½” x 98 ¼”

Lighthouse, 2025, oil on canvas, 30” x 46”

Echo, 2025, oil on canvas, 30” x 36”

The Larch and the Fir, 2025, oil on canvas, 30” x 36”

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

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

Periscope, 2025, oil on canvas, 36” x 36”

When the Deal Goes Down, 2025, oil on canvas, 36” x 36”

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

Arrow, 2025, oil on canvas, 12” x 18” (diptych, each panel 14” x 10”)

A Sea of Riddles, 2025, oil on canvas, 12” x 9”

Sun and Shadow, 2025, oil on canvas, 12” x 9”

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

Broken Bridge, Installation View, Moody Gallery, 2026

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

Stepping Stone, 2025, acrylic and watercolor on paper, 22” x 30”

I’ll Keep It with Mine, 2025, acrylic and watercolor on paper, 22” x 30”

Some Rainy Day, 2025, acrylic and watercolor on paper, 15” x 22”

Like a Fish on a Hook, 2025, acrylic and watercolor on paper, 15” x 22”

Storm Clouds Rising from the Sea, 2025, acrylic and watercolor on paper, 15” x 22”

Broken Bridge, Installation View, Moody Gallery, 2026

Broken Bridge, Installation View, Moody Gallery, 2026

Broken Bridge, Installation View, Moody Gallery, 2026

Broken Bridge, Installation View, Moody Gallery, 2026

MICHAEL KENNAUGH Born: Casper, Wyoming, 1964 Currently lives and works in Houston, Texas

EDUCATION

1990 1986

M.F.A., University of North Texas, Denton, Texas Leysin American School, Leysin, Switzerland B.F.A., Lamar University, Beaumont, Texas

AWARDS AND HONORS

1996 1988 1987

Residency, The William Flanagan Memorial Creative Persons Center, Montauk, New York Second Place, Dishman National Competition, Lamar University, Beaumont, Texas First Place, Dishman National Competition, Lamar University, Beaumont, Texas

TEACHING EXPERIENCE

2007 2005 1990 1987 1984-87

Glassell School of Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Instructor Glassell School of Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Instructor University of North Texas, Denton, Texas, Teacher Adjunct Gold Coast Art League, Beaumont, Texas, Painting Instructor Lamar University, Beaumont, Texas, Student Assistant

LECTURES

2006 2005 2001 2000 1999 1998 1990

Artist's Eye, Lecture on Mondrian, Menil Collection “Talking About Contemporary Art”, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas Artist Spotlight, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas Lawndale Art and Performance Center, Houston, Texas Glassell School, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, Texas University Gallery, Baylor University, Waco, Texas Leysin American School, Leysin, Switzerland

SOLO EXHIBITIONS

2026 2023 2022 2021 2018 2016 2015 2013 2012 2010 2007 2004

“Broken Bridge”, Moody Gallery, Houston, Texas “Telling the Bees”, Moody Gallery, Houston, Texas “Selected Works by Michael Kennaugh”, Beeville Art Museum, Beeville, Texas “Black Bird”, Moody Gallery, Houston, Texas “Driving to Eden”, Moody Gallery, Houston, Texas “It Was a Fine Idea at the Time”, Moody Gallery, Houston, Texas “Locus in Quo”, Galveston Arts Center, Galveston Texas “Locus in Quo”, Art Museum of Southeast Texas, Beaumont, Texas (catalogue) “New Work: Paintings, Drawings, and Sculptures”, Moody Gallery, Houston, Texas “Zero Road”, Moody Gallery, Houston, Texas “The Camel’s Back”, Moody Gallery, Houston, Texas “Water and Stone”, Moody Gallery, Houston, Texas “Nexus”, Moody Gallery, Houston, Texas

2002 2000 1998 1997 1996 1990

“Haven”, Moody Gallery, Houston, Texas “Monuments and Myths”, Lawndale Art and Performance Center, Houston, Texas “New Work”, Sally Sprout Gallery, Houston, Texas “Michael Kennaugh - Recent Work”, Galveston Arts Center, Galveston, Texas “Drawings and Paintings”, Sally Sprout Gallery, Houston, Texas 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

2024-25

2023 2021-22 2021 2020 2019 2018

2017

2016

2015-16 2015

2013 2012 2011 2010 2005 2004 2003

“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 “Target Texas: Studio Practice”, Art Museum of South Texas, Corpus Christi, Texas (exhibition catalogue) “20x20, Honduras Threads”, Andrew Durham Gallery, Houston, Texas “MFAH Staff Art Show”, Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Houston, Texas “Our Back Pages”, Dishman Art Museum, Lamar University, Beaumont, Texas “The Box Exhibition”, Hooks Epstein Gallery, Houston, Texas “MFAH Staff Art Show”, Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Houston, Texas “From the Vault: Selections from the Art Museum of Southeast Texas”, Tyler Museum of Art, Tyler, Texas “MFAH Staff Art Show”, Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Houston, Texas “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 “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 “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 “40th Anniversary Exhibition”, Moody Gallery, Houston, Texas "Texas Abstract", Rudolph Blume Fine Art / ArtScan Gallery, Houston, Texas “Texas Abstract, Modern | Contemporary”, Galveston Arts Center, Galveston, Texas, curated by Ken General “Editions”, Moody Gallery, Houston, Texas “In Plain Sight”, curated by Aaron Parazette, McClain Gallery, Houston, Texas “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 “35 Years: Anniversary Exhibition”, Moody Gallery, Houston, Texas “Aqueous Abstractions: Contemporary American Watercolors”, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas “Mind, Mark and Wit”, Williams Tower, Houston, Texas “Preparatory Works”, The Jung Center, Houston, Texas, curated by Clint Willour “Abstract Concepts”, The Art Center, Stephen F. Austin University, curated by Clint Willour “Miniatures”, Hooks-Epstein Galleries, Houston, Texas

2002 2001

2000 1999

1998

1997 1996 1995 1994

1993 1992 1989 1988 1987

1986 1985

“Works by Michael Kennaugh and Kyle Young”, One City Centre Lobby, Houston, Texas “The Potent Line”, Williams Tower Gallery, Houston, Texas “Southeast Texas Recollects”, Art Museum of Southeast Texas, Beaumont, Texas “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 “Texas, Across State Lines”, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas “Houston Area Show”, Blaffer Gallery, University of Houston, Houston, Texas “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 “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 “Defining the Figure”, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas “Classically Inspired”, Hooks Epstein Galleries, Houston, Texas “Vernacular”, Lawndale Art and Performance Center, Houston, Texas “Drawing from Strength”, Transco Tower Gallery, Houston, Texas “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 “Dia de los Muertos”, Lawndale Art and Performance Center, Houston, Texas Lawndale Art and Performance Center, Houston, Texas “University of North Texas Print Exhibition”, Odessa Junior College, Odessa, Texas “Dishman National Competition”, Lamar University, Beaumont, Texas; juror, Betty Moody, Moody Gallery, Houston, Texas “Dishman National Competition”, Lamar University, Beaumont, Texas; juror, Sheila Stewart, Museum of Southeast Texas, Beaumont, Texas Allied Bank of Beaumont, Beaumont, Texas “Senior Exhibition”, Lamar University, Beaumont, Texas “Friends of the Arts”, Lamar University, Beaumont, Texas “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

MICHAEL KENNAUGH BROKEN BRIDGE

JANUARY 10 – FEBRUARY 21, 2026

2815 COLQUITT HOUTSON, TEXAS 77098 713-526-9911 info@moodygallery.com moodygallery.com