Heavy Hitter, 18x24 inches oil on canvas panel by Kenney Mencher

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I think for a lot of straight people, the idea of boxers and athletes being gay or the object of homoerotic attention is at odds with the prejudices that they have been taught by mainstream culture. However, if one was to really think about athletic culture all the way back to ancient Greece and Rome, athletics and homoeroticism are closely intertwined. It also makes sense that a lot of gay men who are into physical culture would participate in boxing and other sports to stay in shape.

One of the things that I like in particular about painting boxers and fighters for a gay audience is the paradox of the gay man as a target who is perfectly capable of striking back at a world that often is aggressive or offensive to his very existence.

Color was of particular interest in this painting and I was trying to use contrasts of complementary colors and cool and warm contrasts in it to set the warm tones of the flesh of the character into the foreground and make the background received by using cooler smokier colors.

Textures something that I really like to focus on and use different textures for the figure, the clothing, the gloves, and the background.