Steven Kenny first gained notoriety as a freelance commercial illustrator. Clients included Sony Music, Time Magazine, AT&T, United Airlines, Celestial Seasonings, Microsoft and many others. His illustrations repeatedly received awards from the Society of Illustrators, Communication Arts Magazine and the Art Directors’ Club of New York.
His award-winning paintings are exhibited in galleries across the United States and Europe. Honors include grants from the Virginia and Franz Bader Fund, the Joyce Dutka Arts Foundation, and fellowships from the Virginia Commission for the Arts, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and Creative Pinellas. His paintings can be found in the permanent collections of the Leepa-Rattner Museum of Art, Museo Arte Contemporanea Sicilia, and many private collections around the world.
From an early age the beauty and mystery of nature have deeply influenced his chosen subject matter: surreal compositions that most often combine the human figure with elements from nature to comment on our interactions with the environment while symbolically alluding to the multi-facetted dynamics of human nature in general. Stylistically, Steven employs Old Master oil painting techniques to create images that are visually reminiscent of the Renaissance and Northern Baroque periods while being firmly rooted in the realm of Contemporary Art.
