About
Abbi Kenny (b. 1998, Boston, MA) is an artist based in Kingston, NY. She received her MFA in painting from Boston University’s College of Fine Arts (2024) and her BFA with honors in painting and a minor in the Theory and History of Art and Design from the Rhode Island School of Design (2020). She is a Lecturer of Painting and Drawing at Purchase College, SUNY. In recent years, Abbi has lived in Brooklyn, Boston, Toronto, and Providence. While at RISD, Abbi participated in the European Honors Program in Rome, Italy. She is a recipient of the Royal Drawing School’s Dumfries House Estate drawing residency and grant near Cumnock, Scotland (2019), the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant in painting (2022), a residency and Cottage Award at the Woodstock Byrdcliffe Guild Artist Residency (2024), and most recently, a residency at the Vermont Studio Center (2026). Her work has been published in New American Paintings, Maake Magazine, and the Observer. She has exhibited at Main Projects in Richmond, VA; September Gallery in Kinderhook, NY; Field Projects in New York, NY; Morgan Lehman Gallery in New York, NY; and the RISD Museum in Providence, RI, among others. Her first solo show will take place at Main Projects in June 2026.
Contact
abbihkenny@gmail.com
News
My show The Tasting Room opens June 4 at Main Projects, Richmond, VA. The exhibition will be on view on June 4 - July 9.
The Tasting Room brings together new paintings by Abbi Kenny in which shellfish, martini olives, fruit, serving platters, and ornamental excess accumulate into layered compositions shaped by touch, preparation, and display. Drawing from meals she cooks, seafood markets, family recipes, historical cookbooks, and personal archives, Kenny constructs paintings that feel simultaneously seductive, humorous, and slightly uncanny. Working with raw pigment, pumice, glitter, mica, glass beads, and semi-precious stones, she builds densely layered surfaces through sanding, masking, pouring, and abrasion, causing illusionistic imagery to fracture into accumulations of texture and material residue. Decorative borders, checkerboards, marbled surfaces, and saturated patterns compete with carefully rendered objects, allowing the paintings to shift between still life, collage, advertisement, and staged display. Throughout the exhibition, food hovers between appetite, ornament, ritual, and performance as meaning emerges slowly through repetition, juxtaposition, and material transformation.
Join us for the opening of Speakeasy Happy Hour at UTOPIA in Kingston, NY, on May 2 from 4 - 7 pm. Curated by Luke Whittaker, the show features six painters: Abbi Kenny, Eden Taff, Hannah Lupton Reinhard, Luke Morrison, Noelle Timmons, and Sylvie Mayer.
Speakeasy Happy Hour offers a unique opportunity to engage an audience in the perception of art by exploring the question, How can art be tasted, smelt, or touched when it demands the privacy of its personal space. Curation exists to take disparate artworks and initiate an emotional or physical response through the viewer's personal experience. Speakeasy Happy Hour endeavors to bridge the physical boundaries between art and the audience by pairing specific drinks with the already curated selection of artwork. Gallery-goers are encouraged to investigate the artwork, soaking in colors, scenes, and figures while exploring its essence captured in the paired cocktail’s taste, smell, and touch.
