Works are priced by size and range from $300 for the smallest food paintings, which are kept affordable as part of a project called ‘will paint for food’ (more on that below) to $5000 for the largest farm works.
Images shown on this site are only a portion of what is currently available in the studio or through my gallery representatives.
Please contact the respective galleries directly for pricing regarding works listed as such.
If you don’t see something, check back in for site updates or feel free to ask.
We are happy to entertain commission requests. Use the contact form. If you discovered the work through a gallery, we respectfully request that you contact them directly.
We don’t currently carry any reproductions but we take special orders for single archival giclee prints - let us know your interest and the good folks at iolabs will take care of the rest.
Food painting come framed with a floating 1.75” matte black frame. (update with link to images)
Drawings are available through the studio unframed - i recommend Providence Picture Frame’s excellent services for these.
Framing on the large varies & is negotiable.
Yes, but by appointment only. We had a fantastic run with Pawtucket Open Studios but are no longer open to the public.
Painting for Food
Shawn Kenney began making food paintings about five years ago as part of a self-imposed “artistic boot camp” to get in shape after being away from the easel for too long—one small study a day, using a makeshift shadow box and the classical “sight-size” method. Yet, his goal was anything but classical. “I wanted these paintings to be fresh, informal, off-kilter, lit-by-the-fridge-at-night,” Kenney says. “They’re rustic Italian in both sensibility and execution.”
In terms of the subject matter, “food was an easy choice—something I know & love. Also helped that it was readily at hand and could serve as lunch after the session. My wife and I take great pleasure in cooking and planning trips based on culinary adventures. I’ve got a stack of cookbooks on my night stand that I read like novels.”
Once his inventory of appealing little food studies grew, restaurateurs, café-owners, grocers, wineries, friends and collectors began to snap them up—initially online and now through galleries in New England and California.
Through a project he calls Will Paint for Food, he has been donating a portion of the proceeds from the sale of his paintings to food banks and other hunger-relief organizations, including the Rhode Island Community Food Bank, Women Against Hunger, Share Our Strength/Operation Frontline and Heifer International.
“It’s a way to give back and a natural fit for my resources and interests. The food paintings are intentionally priced lower, keeping them and the project accessible to many. Ultimately, we’d like to grow the project to the point where others could adopt it and contribute to their local organizations and pantries.”
As for his ongoing fascination with food—whether through cooking, reading, traveling, sampling local favorites or painting the products and ingredients we all have in our kitchens—Kenney says that all of his work is “unabashedly comfort-driven.” He recognizes that his food paintings are technically still lifes, yet in his mind that terminology makes them “feel like something far more intellectual. It’s really about connecting, shared memories, celebrating the table…it’s the joy of experiencing those simple pleasures with others.”
from the spring 2011 issue of RISDxyz, Rhode Island School of Design’s alumni magazine
The food paintings on this site are just a fraction of the hundreds in a body of work produced over the past 5 years & it seemed like the time was right to give them a home of their own.
We’re launching the site shortly - http://midnitekitchenart.com
Since 2006, we’ve been donating a portion of the proceeds from each sale of original food-themed works, prints, and note cards to agencies working to end hunger through education, outreach, and food distribution.
Donations have been, and continue to be made to Rhode Island Community Food Bank, Women Against Hunger, Share Our Strength/Operation Frontline and Heifer International.
We are currently updating the website - http://willpaint.com/
Like the title character in ‘Ferdinand’, I’m happiest out in a field, lost in the clouds.
I’ve seen these works in my head for years but have only recently felt up to getting them down on canvas.
They are inspired equally by visits to local farms, Herriot’s All Creatures Great and Small, Sendak’s Wild rumpus, and the animals (Animals) brought to life in the stories of Gregory Maguire, Tex Avery, and Joseph Campbell.
Neither taxonomy nor romantic ideal of ‘the way life oughta be’ - they’re an attempt to share the immense sense of peace and wonder that rural settings instill in me.
The bulls were the fossil that served to get me back into the studio, and ran as a series from 2005-2008. They’ll be back.
from a previous statement:
Out grazing in fields or flying, locomotive-fury at a rodeo, they are breathtaking.
Familiar and limitless, combining the earthy symbolism of myth and history, present from cave paintings through Goya’s “Tauromaquia.”
They have become comfort food - mined and returned to again and again, serving to ground and refocus.
The paintings almost always emerge, as if excavated, from a well-seasoned canvas and mounds of drawings. No one sketch leads directly to a final piece, but at some point they all seem to take on a life of their own and show me where to go.
I studied at the Rhode Island School of Design from 1989 to 1993, graduating with a BFA in illustration - that departmental focus ironically allowed me to concentrate on learning to paint, draw, think, & communicate without constraints.
I was tremendously fortunate to study with, among others: David Macaulay, Victor Lara, Thomas Sgouros, Dean Richardson, and Barry Moser.
I also meet best friends Scott Conary & Derek Gores.
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Funny how often this one comes up.
Acrylic paints are the best medium for getting an image from my head to yours.
In cooking terms, it’s rustic italian in execution.
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Sadly, this rumor won’t go away. Eddie’s doing brilliant work on his own…but you can never rule out a future collaboration.
We’ve tried to make it easy to find answers to the most common questions - if you can’t find what you’re looking for here, drop us a line using the CONTACT link.