The Middle East (1992)

The work in The Middle East series (1992-2003), continue Kennedy's interest in amassing commercial paint around their colour names. As with An American History Painting (The Complete List of Pittsburgh Paints Historic Colour Series) and The Native, Kennedy selected the colours for The Middle East works based on their name's topicality. More specifically, he selected paint with names derived from colonial interpretations of Middle Eastern cultures, such as Arabian Night, Camel Brown, Desert Haze, Egyptian Red, Mirage Lake, Persian Melon, and Turkish Tile. 

This work begun with Kennedy's 1992 installation The Middle East (A Room Painting) (Galleri II, Reykjavik, Iceland) in which he encircled the gallery with a series of 75 squares painted at his eye level, one for each of the colours in this series. He then took the left over paint from this installation and created The Middle East (75 Paintings), a series of 12" x 16" canvases with identical brush strokes in each of the colours, which was first exhibited at Anna Leonowens Gallery (NSCAD, Halifax) later the same year. In 1993, Kennedy expanded this work for his Middle East exhibition at Cold City Gallery (Toronto), in which he exhibited the 75 paintings alongside The Middle East (Painting on Canvas), a summary painting in which he covered the canvas with a layer of each paint colour, leaving a stripe of each under layer visible as he went. Then in 1996, he created The Middle East (A Cross-Section), a photograph of an enlarged paint chip cross section taken from the summary painting.

This series of works was exhibited throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, both nationally and internationally, under the title The Middle East (And Beyond), and touring as part of both Garry Neill Kennedy: Wall Paintings and Related Works, 1974-1995, and Kennedy's retrospective, Work of Four Decades.