In Unexpected Guest, Donald Schenkel explores the moment when an unforeseen presence enters an otherwise balanced system.
The composition unfolds through soft gradients of colour, layered wet-in-wet in a single movement. From a distance, the surface appears smooth and almost immaterial; up close, the canvas reveals subtle textures and traces of physical interaction.
Vertical shifts interrupt the horizontal flow of colour, introducing a quiet disturbance within the image. These interventions do not dominate the composition, but alter its rhythm and emotional temperature. What first reads as calm and expansive gradually becomes more ambiguous.
The title refers both to lived experience and to the painting process itself. In Schenkel’s practice, chance is not avoided but invited. Certain colours assert themselves unexpectedly, changing the outcome of the work in ways that cannot be fully predicted.
Unexpected Guest reflects on hospitality, vulnerability, and the way unforeseen encounters - in life as well as in material - can subtly but permanently reshape a situation.