Lone Wolf, 12x16 inches oil on canvas panel by Kenney Mencher
FREE SHIPPING Shipping takes 3-4 Weeks This ships from Round Lake Beach, Illinois. A suburb outside of Chicago. I use UPS and sometimes US Post.
This is an oil painting of a well muscled hairy otter on a canvas panel.
What does it mean to be called an otter?
Otter flag. Within the LGBT community, otter is a term to describe a type of gay man. Otters generally have a lot of body hair, much like bears, but are smaller in frame and/or weigh considerably less than bears.
The term is a subset of the term bear, which describes the stereotype of hairy and big gay men. Otters, the comparison goes, look a bit like small bears. As such, the term is used to describe the stereotype of bears' smaller, more lean, and potentially more effeminate counterparts. Other differences between these two categories are that otters are generally more accepting of more feminine appearance, behavior and body types, such as twinks.
There are otters of all ages, with younger ones often being called cubs.
The background of the term is necessarily intertwined with that of the term bear, which became popular in 1970s San Francisco. Originally, all hairy gay men were seen this way, until the term was appropriated by larger people, with different terms being coined for those who are hairy but with a smaller frame. Later, many other categories followed.
The reason why I paint on canvas panels is because they are sturdier and tend to flex less than traditional oil on stretched canvas. The panels I use have an acid free core and are safer to ship and will be less likely to damage while shipping and will age better and will work less if they are framed over time.
In terms of the painting’s composition, one of the things that I like to do is to eliminate as much negative space as possible and to devote as much of the painting to filling up the composition or picture plane as I can. Another way that I do this is to have the figure touch or “kiss” the four edges of the canvas to make a sort of interesting spiral composition.
Texture is a big part of my painting and it’s one of the more abstract qualities. If you look closely at the painting you’ll see that the body is rendered mainly with brushes and thick impastos of paint. The term “impasto,” literally translates from the Italian as the word paste and it is an art historical term to describe thick layers of paint. I set off the brushwork of the body with thick troweled on paint in the background.
