You Could Tell Just by Looking, 16x20 inches oil on canvas panel by Kenney Mencher

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This male portrait of a very masculine sexy hairy man is an original painting. I mainly make art about gay bears and other types of art for the queer community. A lot of my art revolves around the portrayal of heroic older bearish or bullish men. In my paintings I'm trying to communicate about body positivity and the beauty of the heroic male "bear."

Many straight folks are unaware of the bear subculture. Hardly a surprise, since a powerful majority rarely concerns itself with the doings of a marginalized minority. When, three or four years ago, I first mentioned bears to my straight friends, none of them knew what I was talking about, though by now at least one of them calls me “The Bear.” Similarly, my heterosexual students, as expert as they might be on current media, seem equally ignorant about this topic.

This painting was done in the "alla prima" method. The alla prima is an Italian phrase that means 'at first attempt'. It refers to a wet-on-wet approach whereby wet paint is applied to previous layers of still-wet paint, often in a single sitting. Over the years, the technique has been adopted and adapted by artists from Van Gogh to Velázquez.

In gay culture, a bear is a larger and often hairier man who projects an image of rugged masculinity.

Many straight folks are unaware of the bear subculture. Hardly a surprise, since a powerful majority rarely concerns itself with the doings of a marginalized minority. When, three or four years ago, I first mentioned bears to my straight colleagues in the English Department at Virginia Tech, none of them knew what I was talking about, though by now at least one of them calls me “The Bear.” Similarly, my heterosexual students, as expert as they might be on current media, seem equally ignorant about this topic.

Most GLBT folks, however, by now seem to know the basics. A “bear” is a hairy, bearded, brawny-to-bulky gay man, usually displaying aspects of traditional masculinity. A cub is a younger version of the same; a wolf is a lean, hairy man; an otter a young version of that. “Woof!” is a lustful expression, meaning essentially: “Tasty! I’d like to climb all over that!” “Grrrrr!” means much the same. As you can see, after twenty-some years of development, the bear community, like any subculture, has its own jargon, sometimes called “bearspeak” or “vocabulary.” It also has its own values, its own style, and its own commodities. There are bear-oriented bars, festivals, music, movies, magazines, and books. There are regional clubs for bears not only in metropolitan centers, where the communities first developed, but also in rural areas.

I try to make really well crafted work about the human figure and the human condition. I focus on the kind of beauty for both men and women that is "non-standard." I'm most interested in representing people who don't get represented by mainstream artists. I particularly like painting bears, cubs, and other wildlife.

I am not a risqué or sexy kind of guy, however, at times some of my work has been called that. This is only a small part of what my paintings are about. The majority of my work deals with the visual translation of familiar ideas.

My images are about points of view, my own and the person who is looking at my work. These images are designed to provoke discussion about the politics of how we see the world. Many images are based on the visual, literary, and spoken clichés that we are inculcated with through movies, television, and print media. These paintings indirectly reference how the media forces us to see the world but even though the media seeks to find a homogenous point of view, we all see things differently. My paintings are ink blot tests and they beg the question, what’s your point of view?

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