By Donald Schenkel
Oil on canvas
130 × 80 cm, 2025
Wooden frame included

In Unexpected Guest, Donald Schenkel explores the moment when an unforeseen presence enters an otherwise balanced system.
The painting unfolds through soft gradients of colour, created wet-in-wet in a single movement. From a distance, the surface appears smooth and almost immaterial; up close, the texture of the canvas and the physicality of oil paint become visible.

Subtle vertical shifts interrupt the horizontal flow of colour, introducing a quiet disturbance that alters the rhythm of the composition. What initially reads as calm and expansive gradually reveals a sense of ambiguity.

The title refers both to lived experience and to Schenkel’s painting process, in which chance plays an active role. Certain colours emerge unexpectedly, reshaping the work as it develops.
Unexpected Guest reflects on hospitality, vulnerability, and the way unforeseen encounters - in life and in material - can leave a lasting trace.

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