“Companions on the Subway” 9 × 12 inches, Crayon on toned Rives BFK

 “Companions on the Subway” 9 × 12 inches, Crayon on toned Rives BFK

https://www.kenneymencher.com/

I have a whole collection of paintings of sleeping people on the subway in my imagination. I’ve been piecing together images of subway interiors and people sleeping, making sketches and more finished drawings as I work out the ideas. This is one of my earliest attempts at bringing the subject into a somewhat finished drawing. I suppose it’s one part a study and several parts a finished work.

The two men sit close together, their heads resting against one another. Their tilted heads and sloping shoulders contrast with the upright poles and rectangular windows of the subway car. Dark jackets, pale shirt collars and the folds of their clothing give the bodies weight. The white marks pick out the faces and hands, while the darker passages connect the figures to the surrounding interior.

At 9 × 12 inches, this is a small drawing that establishes some of the poses I want to explore. I rather like this interior as a backdrop and plan to reuse it in several paintings and drawings. I’ve also envisioned versions with different ages, races, same-sex and heterosexual couples in the same clothes and sleeping poses. These are ideas I’m still developing through the drawings.

I’m using one of my favorite techniques because it comes so close to painting. I tone Rives BFK paper with a wash, then draw back over it with black and white crayons. The wash supplies a middle tone. I can work darker or lighter from that starting point, building the forms while allowing the paper’s texture to show through.

The relationship between those tones reminds me of what my printmaking teachers called a “chiaroscuro woodcut.” This is a drawing, not a woodcut or a print, but it shares that interplay of light, dark and a middle tone. It’s also a nod to the Baroque tradition of heightening a drawing with white over black or brown on paper.

Part of this process is figuring out which marks and textures I might carry into a painting. A broad patch of shadow, a sharp contour or a quick white stroke can do quite different things. This drawing gives me a chance to work those things out while also making something I enjoy as a finished work.

Art-history reference checked: The Met on chiaroscuro woodcuts and toned-paper drawings.

I have an Open Studio in San Carlos, California this Sunday, November 1st, 2026 Noon–4 PM Art Bias · 1700 Industrial Road, San Carlos, CA 94070 (Studios 205 and 207)

I have an Open Studio in San Carlos, California 

 

Sunday, November 1st, 2026 

 

Noon–4 PM 

 

Art Bias 

1700 Industrial Road, 

San Carlos, CA 94070 

(Studios 205 and 207)

“Coffee House” 16 × 22 inches, Crayon on brown Rives BFK paper

 “Coffee House” 16 × 22 inches, Crayon on brown Rives BFK paper $500

https://www.kenneymencher.com/ 

This is a handmade, original work of art NOT A PRINT and NOT AI GENERATED
FREE SHIPPING Shipping takes 3–4 Weeks This ships from San Carlos, California (The San Francisco Bay Area). I use UPS and sometimes US Post.

This drawing describes a familiar experience I’ve had throughout my life, and I suspect plenty of other people will recognize it too. A cup of coffee, a book, a place by the window and some time to look around.

The other day, I realized how closely it captured something that happened after I made it. I rode my bike downtown near where I live to meet an old friend for coffee and breakfast. We’re both old, and we’re old friends, which is important to the story. He forgot.

I had arrived and ordered my mocha and breakfast twenty minutes before we were supposed to meet. Believe me, the barista and cook weren’t in a hurry. It took almost half an hour to get everything, but that didn’t bother me. Neither did my friend spacing out on our date. I texted him, we rescheduled for later, and I enjoyed people watching, reading the book I’d brought, my strong coffee and a yummy breakfast.

I had already drawn this scene, but there I was living a version of it again. The morning had changed a little, and there was still plenty to enjoy.

Coffee is so much a part of my life, and the lives of many other people, that there are songs and even conspiracy theories about it. Bach wrote the “Coffee Cantata,” in which a young woman sings about her love of the drink. A cup of coffee can be an ordinary daily pleasure and also something that sends my thoughts in all sorts of directions.

Recently, I came across a social-media video proposing that coffee and sugar were part of a kind of capitalist conspiracy. The idea was that global trade supplied the stimulants and energy that allowed workers to keep doing the bidding of their capitalist masters. Well, I don’t know how much of that theory holds up. But it’s an interesting thing to have rattling around in your head while you’re enjoying your coffee.

The different perspectives in this drawing have something to do with that. There’s the world inside the coffee house, the street outside, and whatever is going on inside my mind. Even the linear perspective becomes part of that idea. The window frames, sill and tabletop organize the space, but my attention can move between the book, the cup, the room and the view outside. These are different worlds that my mind, my coffee and I inhabit at the same time.

The drawing also captured a small experience before it happened again. The other day, I rode my bike downtown to meet an old friend for coffee and breakfast. We’re both old, and we’re old friends. He forgot. I had ordered early, and the barista and cook took their time, but neither the wait nor my friend spacing out bothered me. I texted him, we rescheduled for later, and I enjoyed people watching, my book, strong coffee and a yummy breakfast. I’ve had versions of this experience throughout my life.

Formally, I like the contrast between the firm structure of the window and the quick marks describing the figure, cars and buildings. The crayon’s grainy shading leaves the warm paper showing through. I also like to pretend that my sketches share something with Rembrandt’s: quick calligraphic lines and gestural blocks of shading that suggest a great deal without spelling everything out. A few marks can give a body weight, establish a room or open a view onto the street. That economy and liveliness are things I admire and keep trying to bring into my own drawings.

Bear Back, 20x16x1.5 inches, oil on canvas, by Kenney Mencher

 

"Bear Back"
20 × 16 inches, oil on canvas

"Bear Back" feels more traditionally "Mencher." I have one foot in my own artistic past here, making pictures for and about older queer men, especially those who don’t fit the trim, athletic, twenty-to-thirty-year-old ideal. I’ve spent years painting bodies that often get left out of that picture. There’s beauty, physical presence, and a sense of recognition in them. I think many of my older friends and collectors will find something familiar in this work.

I’ve made a number of drawings and a couple of other oil sketches of this subject, which I plan to release later. This is a more developed, fairly polished version. The broad back fills most of the canvas, and the arm resting across the chair gives the body weight. Warm pinks and browns sit against the cooler gray-blue background. The direction of the brushstrokes helps describe the shoulders, the spine, and the turn through the hips.

Even in a more finished painting, I want some evidence of how it was made to remain visible. If you look closely, you can see traces of the crayon drawing and patches of the imprimatura, the initial layer of color that forms part of the underpainting. Thin passages allow the canvas texture and earlier marks to show through. Other areas have more substantial, opaque paint. I find the beginnings of a painting quite beautiful, and I’m increasingly interested in keeping some of those beginnings within the finished work.

My training is academic and classical. I’m trying to manipulate that training so the different levels of craft remain visible. The drawing establishes the structure, the underpainting begins to give it form, and the later layers develop the color and the flesh. Some of those stages remain exposed alongside more resolved passages. I want the viewer to get a sense of the decisions and physical work involved in making the image.

This painting is also part of "Self Directed." The character is a kind of allegorical portrait of who I feel I am and who my friends are. That connection goes beyond a literal likeness. It has to do with aging, our sense of ourselves, and recognizing value and beauty in bodies that don’t necessarily fit the prevailing ideal. The more personal direction of my recent work still includes affection for the people and subjects I’ve been painting for years.

https://www.kenneymencher.com/ 

 

Afternoon Art History Lecture, Ohlone College, Fremont, California, 22x30 inches, crayon on toned paper by Kenney Mencher

 "Afternoon Art History Lecture, Ohlone College, Fremont, California"
22 × 30 inches, crayon on toned Rives BFK paper

I left a tenured teaching position in 2016. Leaving gave me a freedom I needed, but it also meant losing some important parts of my life. I still teach part time and offer art history courses online through Udemy. I’m still a professor. That identity didn’t disappear when I left the job. This drawing has a lot to do with living between the person I was and the person I’m becoming.

I’m presently reading Christopher Isherwood’s novel "A Single Man." While it didn’t inspire this drawing, which I am also developing into a painting, parts of the novel reflect feelings and behaviors I recognize from my own life as a college professor. Isherwood captures a particular ambivalence. There’s the desire to change the world and the almost compulsive need to share an insight because you think it might matter to someone. There’s also the resistance of students, the resistance of other academics, and the absurdity of academic life in general. I’ve often felt like two people at once, an automaton performing the familiar routines of teaching and a sincerely caring person who still believes the ideas are worth sharing.

In the drawing, I’m leaning forward over a table and an open book. We look past the students toward the professor and the projected image behind him. The Medici tomb figure is part of the lesson, but it also carries something personal. It references the death of one part of my life and the birth of another. Leaving academia meant liberating myself from some of its demands while also giving up things I valued. I’m still working out what I’ve left behind and what remains part of me.

The figure on the screen also connects to my five-month trip through Europe. I finally saw, in person, works I had spent years admiring and teaching through reproductions. I knew their images long before I stood in front of the actual objects. That experience made me think about the difference between familiarity with an image and being physically present with something. It also made me reconsider what I wanted from my own work.

I think of the classroom as a liminal space. It’s a place where we move between what we know and what we might come to understand. The tomb is another kind of threshold, and these associations bring me back to Plato’s "Republic," particularly the "Allegory of the Cave." I’m thinking about those ideas through their renewed importance in the Italian Renaissance, through the Medici tombs, and through a classroom where we sit looking at projected images. Teaching, travel, and making art all become ways of examining the relationship between representations and experience.

The style of the drawing deliberately carries some of my academic training with it. Working with dark and light marks on toned paper refers to the traditional use of black and white chalk. Here, I’m using a mixture of crayons chosen for permanence on Rives BFK paper. The tone of the sheet provides a middle value. Dark marks build the shadows, while white brings forward the shirt, the tabletop, and the illuminated screen. The overlapping lines and varied textures leave the work of drawing visible.

These questions belong within "Self Directed." Aging is a universal process, and coming to terms with change increasingly shapes my iconography, the people, objects, and spaces I choose to depict. In this drawing, the professor, the students, the book, and the tomb figure bring different parts of my life into the same room. I’m trying to understand how those parts continue to coexist as I decide what to do next.

David Park at Stanford's Anderson Collections

 David Park's paintings at the Anderson Collection at Stanford University.   I took some close ups to remind myself later of the layering and almost glaze like qualities of his paintings.   The paint is so thick that you can see that he would let stuff dry between sections and the next colors lay on top of the earlier layers he let dry.  In the big multiple figure painting, he took a page out of Franz Kline and painted the background in around the figures and his earlier layers, kind of a stratum, are the figures themselves.  Beautiful stuff. I want to remind myself to try that.