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A Quiet Absorption: Paul Fenniak’S Realism, Shannon Egan

Art and Art History Faculty Publications

The cool early morning light casts an eerie stillness over the swimming pool in Paul Fenniak’s painting Short Cut (2006). The protagonist, a young woman with mousy brown hair and a sturdy build, carries a satchel and hunches forward midstride along the right edge of the pool. She looks toward the background of the painting, away from the viewer and across the water. Perhaps she is taking a surreptitious detour through this closed and empty space on her way to school. Fenniak skillfully captures the bluish dawn, the sun raking across clean, calm water, the gentle hint of breeze waving …