Kent Gallery’s Holiday Showcase Wants You to Give the Gift of Art

Through Sunday, December 20; Thursday–Saturday 11am–5:30pm, Sunday 12–4pm | Kent, CT

Kenise Barnes Fine Art in Kent opened its annual group show "Cool & Collected: The Gift Edition" on November 7. Every work costs under $2,000, and the gallery pitches the show as an approachable way to start or add to a collection. It brings together paintings, drawings, prints, photography, ceramics, and textiles by more than 30 gallery artists, among them Jackie Battenfield, Gabe Brown, Cecile Chong, Susan English, Francine Fox, Michiyo Ihara, Andrea Kantrowitz, and Joanne Mattera. Many of the artists are making pieces outside their usual practice, such as painters trying ceramics and sculptors working on paper, the gallery says.

One of the artists is Gregory Hennen, whose small gouache Full Moon and Locust Tree, Wyatt Mt (2023), pictured above, is in the show. The 5-by-5-inch painting, priced at $650, is typical of his work. Hennen paints the mountains and valleys around his home in Virginia and is a naturalist as well as a lifelong painter. On daily walks he fills sketchbooks with the land, the passing light, and the changes of season. He builds his paintings from tens of thousands of small brushstrokes, which the gallery calls both complex and calm.

Kenise Barnes Fine Art, 7 Fulling Lane, Kent, CT. Information at kbfa.com or 860-592-0220.