Mat Barber Kennedy

Chicago, IL

For over twenty years Mat has been drawing and painting aging machines, tools and buildings, constructed in layers, adapted over generations, and decaying in pieces. I’m fascinated by junctions of materials and by the corrosive relationship between designed objects and the passage of time. Occupants die or move on, put up signs and go out of business. Children throw stones and touch door frames which get dirty by the handle. Tools are used, bear scars and grow weary with the years of service. People are never directly depicted in my work but they are always present by implication.

Recent Awards/Highlights2021

2021 Juror and Awards Judge for the National Watercolor Society annual exhibition.

2020
Watercolor Artist Magazine Feb Issue
International Watercolour Masters Exhibition UK 

2019
Winner, Quickpaint, Annapolis
Winner, Paint the Bay, Annapolis
3rd place Art on the Avenue, Annapolis
2nd place artists choice Telluride Plein Air
Award of Excellence Cape Anne Plein Air
Stray Calf Award, En Plein Air Texas
Plein Air Magazine August/September issue 2018 
Santa Fe, 3rd place
Dubuque, Second
Amana, Peoples Choice, 2nd place
Telluride, Peoples Choice, top seller
Historic Annapolis, Best Historic Architecture, Peoples Choice
Door County, 9th year

2017
Door County Plein Air 
Telluride Plein Air, 2nd Peoples Choice, top seller
Bluff Strokes, Best Historic Dubuque, Best Industrial

Associations

Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts - RSA
Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolours.
American Impressionist Society-AIS

Publications

Plein Air Magazine Oct/Nov 2017 issue
American Watercolour weekly 6 August 2018 issue

Website:  http://www.matbarberkennedy.com/