A CLOCK WITHOUT HANDS
May 27 – June 20, 2026
Left: Plums, Plate and Cup, 9 x 12 inches, oil on muslin panel, 2025
Right: A Clock Without Hands, 16 x 20 inches, oil on muslin panel, 2026
Reception: Thursday, May 28, 6–8 pm
A CLOCK WITHOUT HANDS is TIM KENNEDY’S tenth solo exhibition at FIRST STREET GALLERY. In previous shows Kennedy has painted across several genres including landscape and figure composition. In this exhibition he focuses exclusively on still life. As the show’s title suggests still life as a genre may present a space where the forward momentum of time is absent. Time can stand still – or through memory may even move backward where past and present fuse.
Included in the exhibition will be works executed in the spirit of premier coup painting as well as paintings that have evolved over longer periods of time with more considered and evocative subject matter such as clocks, chains and family photographs. These “memory box” paintings comprise a series that has included dozens of variations that have extended over many years. A few examples of older paintings that rhyme thematically with current works have been included in this selection. The exhibition runs from May 27 through June 20.
Tim Kennedy’s paintings fall solidly into the tradition of painterly American representational painting that prizes the particular and the empirical. The paintings allow the viewer to examine the sharply felt yet ordinary event. The unspoken subject at the center of the paintings is the connection between the artist and the tangible, visible world as experienced over time. The paintings celebrate life lived through the senses. Mr. Kennedy’s use of oil paint favors visceral color and the undisguised presence of the artist’s hand. It is work on a human scale that manifests a direct encounter with perceived experience, and conveys an atmosphere filled with light and air.
Mr. Kennedy will give a talk in the gallery about the work at 5pm on Saturday June 20, the final day of the exhibition. Additional examples of Mr. Kennedy’s work may be found at timkennedypaintings.com
Gallery Hours: Wednesday – Saturday, 11 am to 6 pm
