In this blog we will share with you our vision of beauty, balance, harmony.

As Mark Leach writes in his book Raw Colour with Pastels: “Sound is all around us, and it is musicians who refine that sound into something of beauty. As a painter, I have always felt that my purpose is to craft colour in a similar way, to see through the confusion and seek harmony and beauty.”

And we add: Words, fragments of sentences, spoken noise is all around us, and Ken arranges words in such a way as to capture beauty in the accidental, the ambient soundtrack of life.

Monday, November 12, 2012

We have decided to start our own blog and share with you what we love.

This will be a journey in the unknown for, hopefully fun and interesting! 

We will be posting Karin's paintings - all paintings are pastel paintings if not specified otherwise - and work of other painters we like. We will also be sharing poetry by Ken and music we both like.

Morning in Uffing 23,5 x 29,5 cm



LOOKING THE OTHER WAY IN BERLIN

A beautiful, stiff-shouldered
girl crosses the street, and we have
a parade of isolation and indifference
on two legs
hot wet wind ruffling four or five shades
of green in the park she’s walking through. Not a touch
of sway in those shoulders, wearing a skirt and a large
white bandage, gauze, I think, just below her right knee,
everything about her tightly packaged, seemingly
under control, every future decision
already made, so that in a sense she could 
check out of her life temporarily
slip away body and soul
to a garlic festival in California
or a camel race in Marrakesh
and nobody would notice, everything going as planned,
and through it all her blonde hair hanging straight as a Wasserfall.
She looks up, this simulacra, only to catch me
looking the other way.

As if in retribution for my lack of courage
or surplus of discretion or whatever it was
and always a sucker for the vaguely karmic
signals that chance loves to torment us with
a cyclist tries to run me over.
A broad street, plenty of room, and as I run for the gutter
he homes in on me, no other traffic in sight. I feel like
I’m in Pamplona, fending off bulls with a rolled up newspaper.
One or two minutes after avoiding collision
I wonder what the man and woman on their second floor balcony
are thinking eating their breakfast ignoring my stare,
ignoring my shock and outrage, witnesses
to something that almost happened, just minding their own business.
The man, probably a retired cop or taxi driver, wearing a white
tank-top, and the woman, in some flimsy thing
with yellow and pink flowers on it, a dressing gown, and who
once worked in a department store, I’m sure of this, and was rude
to customers for nearly thirty-five years. People here
don’t mind being viewed half-dressed on their
little balconies drinking strong black coffee,
eating three minute eggs, looking the other way when it suits them.

Kenneth Burns

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