Adam Hennessey

Every Time You Speak I Snap a Pencil

Jackson's Art Prize 2026
Oil
Canvas
28 x 35.5 cm

“Pencils recur throughout my work, alongside the painting of white objects. in this painting, a toilet roll is rendered in thick oil paint applied with a palette knife, transforming it from something light and disposable into something heavy, smeared and bodily. This inversion carries a note of toilet humour and a quiet thrill. By placing the pencil behind the roll, the scale is unsettled, suggesting either an oversized pencil or a miniature roll. As with much of my work, beneath these formal concerns lies an underlying bodily and sexual undercurrent, described here with the interplay of rods and orifices.”