Lani Kennefick's life centered around painting, raising her daughter, Luisa, creating a community of friends, and her own esoteric studies. "She was equally inspired in all these areas," her friend Carol Williams of Sag Harbor wrote.
Drawn to color, which she liked to refer to in Goethe's term as "light's suffering and joy," her paintings glowed with clear and unexpected vibrant hues, as did the elegant (always recycled) clothes she wore and the interiors of the many places she lived, including in Sag Harbor, where she and Luisa lived.
Ms. Kennefick, whose given name was Mary Elaine, died on Sept. 3 in Portland, Me., cared for by her daughter and her mother, Mary Laura Kennefick. She was 59 and had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer a few weeks earlier.
Her many friends and large family were inspired by her enthusiasm and generosity, Ms. Williams wrote. "Though she loved well-designed objects of all kinds, she preferred to own as little as possible. Still, the luminously colored rooms she lived in were havens for the many friends she would invite to festive gatherings, of delicious, inventively cooked meals, thoughtful conversation, laughter and dancing."
Ms. Kennefick was born in Boston on Feb. 14, 1961, to Robert Kennefick and Mary Laura Kennefick, the second of five children. She grew up in Franklin, Mass., spending summers in an enclave of family cabins on a lake in New Hampshire.
Interested in art from an early age, she earned a B.F.A. in painting from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1983 and then moved to Manhattan, where she painted and lived with friends on the Lower East Side.
Her daughter was born in 1991. Two years later, Ms. Kennefick moved to Sag Harbor, where she lived until her daughter left for college in 2009. "Lani sometimes reflected later that the 16 years she spent there were the most significant in her life, with respect to the relationships she formed," Ms. Williams wrote.
In Sag Harbor, Ms. Kennefick took a variety of jobs, all while continuing to paint. For many years she worked for the Retreat, a domestic violence agency, visiting local public schools to teach children never to bully. With her flair for fashion and design, she helped launch the Retreat's thrift shop.
After Luisa left for college, Ms. Kennefick deepened her focus on painting, returning to the city to earn an M.F.A. from the New York Academy of Art, which she had chosen for its emphasis on figurative painting. Over the last decade she produced many small paintings on vividly colored silk-screened papers, centered around images of animals, insects, or birds, creatures evocative of myths and dreams. "She made a study of the relationship between animal beings and aspects of the human soul -- from the most ancient cultures through the writings of Rudolf Steiner and Carl Jung. Though she read extensively, her work was always profoundly intuitive, personal, and visionary in nature," her friend wrote.
She showed a group of animal paintings at the Chanel boutiques in the city, worked as a waitress, taught workshops at the Rubin Museum of Art, and took care of children, but her painting was her primary focus, as she adapted her medium to the often small spaces in which she worked in various sections of Brooklyn.
Last year, Ms. Kennefick moved to Portland, not far from her family's summer cottages in New Hampshire. "Though she knew no one . . . she quickly found an apartment near the sea which she loved and painted in deep and wondrous shades," Ms. Williams wrote. Just before she fell ill, she had landed a job with a design firm that "recognized her remarkable gift for color."
Ms. Kennefick's father died before her. In addition to her mother, who lives in Madison, N.H., and her daughter, Luisa M. Kennefick, who lives in Minneapolis, Ms. Kennefick is survived by her daughter's father, Carl Froelich of San Diego, and by her siblings: Michael Kennefick of Franklin, Mass., Peggy Cromwell of Conway, N.H., Mark Kennefick of Telluride, Colo., and Peter Kennefick of Walpole, Mass. She also leaves an uncle who grew up as almost a sibling, Rob Nelson of Madison, N.H., many cousins, nephews, and nieces with whom she was close, and a large family of friends in New England, New York City, and on the East End.
Her daughter hopes to hold a gathering in her memory on the South Fork next summer.
