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.

Sunday, November 17, 2013

Turquoise Contemplation

Ich hatte mal ne türkise Vase - Once I had a turquoise vase 38 x 28 cm

Many years ago - more than 30 for sure - I visited the relatives of my friend Alan and his mother had a red flower infront of a turquoise painting. I never forgot that color combination. I loved it.

So, Alan, this is to you!



CONTEMPLATION

                                    If you look long enough into the abyss
                                    the abyss just might look back.
                                                                  Friedrich Nietzsche                                              

On a good day when I
look at a work of art
I experience a state of mind
I call ecstatic contemplation.
I am lifted up to a pleasant mountain
pavilion fluffed with scented cushions
and here’s a water pipe, thank you so much, loaded 
with a cutting-edge substance, and the tip
of this pipe, connected to my mouth, 
is held in place there by a half-naked girl
whose twin sister is down at the other end
giving me, shall we say, a lovely foot massage?
But no, I don’t think that’s what art does;
I think that’s what middle-age does.
Otherwise multitudes of robust
consumers upon whom our economic  
health depends would abandon shopping malls
and theme parks and KFCs and we would have
to wait hours to get into the Dallas-Ft. Worth
Museum of Fine Arts on a Monday evening,
the Cowboys playing the 49ers at home to empty seats.
We would have to book the Prado, the Uffizi
years in advance. Ecstatic contemplation
is an out of body experience, and
there’s a hidden risk to self-esteem.
It’s not meant to be easy. First,
you stand back and wait for a Russian aesthete
to cell phone photograph his hot-panted
friend teetering on her spike-heeled tight-
rope athwart the “Primavera,” say, or a
little garden scene by Leonardo as if it
were a new Jag or Porsche. Then, after
they depart, you find yourself, if all goes well,
cut off, out of the world, lost in a dream
of perfect skin—those Italian masters were
notorious voluptuaries, and even Mary, virgin mother  
of God, looks hot—shimmering silks and fabrics    
in intricate golden lit folds and creases. If you stand   
there long enough the picture waking from its
own dream will notice it’s being noticed
and start to contemplate you; vaguely androgynous   
angels with rainbow wings will take you in   
if none too ecstatically, and it’s like that line
in the Rilke poem: You Must Change Your
Life the Archaic Torso says to the Great Poet, i.e., thou art
a dud compared to me, a slob, and my maker wouldn’t waste
five minutes of his valuable time rendering you—
or, as a certain king once put it, “it’s now or 
never,” so there’s no time to waste.





Omar Faruk Tekbilek - Ayasofya

Sunday, November 10, 2013

Lies and Deception

Rot fängt Grün - Red catches Green 48,5 x 33 cm





DECEPTION

It can’t hurt if I consume
one less muffin for breakfast
tomorrow, drink my coffee black,
no sugar, no cream, then go
jogging in the sultry afternoon
heat, really uncomfortable, steam
rising off my hair. And I believe
it. One more beer this evening
and I’ll go without tomorrow, have
a beer-less day, booze-free. I swear. All right
just one last grappa to “aid digestion.”
And I believe that too. Which is good
since, as evolutionary biologists insist,
that sneaky, twisting, brutally rank
back pathway that leads you past
the village midden and place of public execution—
i.e., the road to effective deception—
is one of self-deception. Is deceit, then,  
the key to human success? Yes, if you don’t get
caught or, even better, catch yourself.  
At twelve or thirteen I convinced myself that
I was a vampire and my seventeen year old
math tutor was so entranced by my self-belief
that she threw her head back and allowed me
to gnaw on her plump throat. Soon we
believed that she might
also be a vamp and before long
were celebrating festivals
of Transylvanian folklore. Then mom
sent her home early one day when
the teeth marks had become too obvious, too
purple. I suggested, and she
rejected, turtlenecks. I realize now
that other needs were being met—
better tip-toe around that one,
we might start looking for a victim
where none was. Or am I
deceiving myself about that
too? Confusing, which is pretty much a
given, just as being alive makes us victims
of too many events, aftermaths, detox talk
downs, two, three, four in the morning
piss calls, and other anxiety attacks. President
Clinton did not have sex with that   
woman (a pause for breath, a cheer for chutzpa!) Monica Saywhatsky.
I do believe he believed himself. He is a lawyer
after all and, as we know, the legally trained mind can make 
ultra-fine distinctions out of the most blatant bullshit—
“Is a blow job sex? Nah, I don’t think so.” —it can’t help itself.   
“The Devil made me do it,” a sit-com character used to say on TV.
O Satan, thou prince of deceivers, who made you “do it?”
 




 Henry Rollins Band - Liar

Sunday, November 3, 2013

Caught in the Middle

Gefangen - Caught 23,5 x 29,5 cm






ON A VISIT OF POPE BENEDICT TO BERLIN

What about those Renaissance popes,
God bless ‘em, Borgias and Medici, and Julius 2,
the “warrior” pope, tormentor of Buonarroti,
leading his armies into the field? Think of mistresses,
catamites, long stretches of picturesque corruption.
So along came the last Pope with his grim looking
worried entourage of dark suits in sunglasses
with things in their ears, and even if
the Bishop of Rome is
unable to put an infantry division in the field
anymore, is more administrator than despot,
preserver of arcane ritual and curator of exquisite artifacts,
he’s still powerful enough to stop traffic
on a dime: whole boulevards swept clean of common
commuters, even side streets, making room 
for the Main Attraction’s motorcade
and outlying security detachments. Product managers blitzed on
caffeine had to walk to work in their expensive not meant to be
walked so far in shoes while sleek papal courtiers 
sweet talked the press and ate prime rib for lunch, every-
one, even elected officials and their
fresh haircuts—the mayor’s
“do” was especially well-wrought, with more bounce per ounce
than a new tennis ball—at least mimed the bent knee.
Yes, we are attentive when the Vicar of Christ speaks,
respectful even, for a while anyway, some of us
at least half-amazed, if politely mute about it,
that someone so important could seem so,
well, insignificant. But then sacred and secular are a little fuzzy
in my poor confused head: batmobile I can still cope with,
though I must confess—forgive me, father, etc.
   and a thousand “Hail Marys” to you too, dude—that  
popemobile goes way beyond my grasp of what’s holy in the moly.





REM - Loosing my Religion