Nicolas Kennett was born in Kent, England, in 1967 and he is currently living and working in Paris.  From 1986-1988 he was the assistant of the American sculptor, Cyril Heck.  From 1988-1994 he studied at École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts de Paris and received honors with the félicitations du jury.

Early influences in Kennett’s artwork are artists such as: Frémiet, Rembrandt Bugatti and Barye. A personal style appears from early on and the latest work is hard to classify. French art critics have tried to compare it with the approach of the primitives in the way the images are conjured up. There is behind the colorful mask of enamel, a story, a message, a vision that is so complex and yet obvious that one is at a loss to understand it. Maybe that isn’t the way to look at Kennett’s work. It is a hard thing to stop one’s head. Is this what is needed here? Does not this work propose a journey, a sharing of experience where to feel is the key and to let go the guide?

The world is in constant quest of novelty, but to follow this quest is artistically usually a failure with hollowness for result.  Novelty is the individual and if Kennett’s work is so hard to crack is it not because it is so individual?  The true strength of influence and inspiration is his constant relationship with nature and concern for the living world, the strength of the power of life that he strives to restitute in all its manifestations through his art.

The bountifulness of images and daily accumulation of sensitive material has brought Kennett in the past 2 years to develop a new form of work..chalk drawing on slate.  The immediateness of result, the utter speed this media allows, and the use of his left hand, for the right-hander he is, carries the diversity and depth of a busy inner life without the censorship of willful thinking.  Through this new angle we read the intimacy of his kaleidoscopic world.