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, April 27, 2014

Jupiter

Die Höhle - The Cave 40 x 50 cm mixed media





AUSTRO-HUNGARIAN MOMENT

Soggy morning on the outskirts
of Prague or Vienna—think of huge
pretzels big enough to hang around
an elephant’s neck, cakes and pastries
filled with whipped cream and jam, strudels
of such juiciness that the bearded among us
look befouled after only a few bites,
the blackest coffee, the blackest coffee ever brewed,
newspapers hanging like flags from the wall of a chandeliered cafe—
men in cloaks, little coffins with pistols, a doctor in frock
coat and top hat, called in from one of the season’s
more elaborate balls at which, evidently, physicians
were also needed. It’s ten paces, turn and shoot until
one of the dualists holds up a languid, white-gloved
hand and says, ”I’m not the man who insulted you last night.
That was my twin brother Edgar who even as we speak
is half-way to Nice on the Cote d’Azur Express. He has
enormous gambling debts as well which, in combination
with excessive consumption of Sekt and spirits, makes him, well,
say intolerable things to more or less perfect strangers.”
Something like this has happened to all of us before. We believed the
weather report. We went to that beach resort, that park famous for
its pick-nick areas and wading pools, the musical gazebos and dancing
polar bears, and it came down in buckets; when, against all expectation, all hope,
the whipped cream was canned and the apples sour. When even
Edgar wasn’t who we thought he was.




Mozart - 4th movement of the 41st (Jupiter) Symphony
Karl Böhm - Vienna Philharmonic

Sunday, April 20, 2014

Pavarotti's Hanky

Die Zugfahrt - The Train Ride 40 x 30 cm Acryl on HDF board





ANDY WARHOL

We are asked to believe
Little Pete the street poet is Rimbaud
in no-ass pants, gobs of grubby
underwear hanging out
like Pavarotti’s hanky. Next, the Zeitgeist
comes prancing out of You Tube
singing hey looky looky at me
clutching its crotch and before long 
you clutch yours as well just
to see what it feels like even if
the terrain is well known to you. Not a
major issue any way you
look at it. After all
life could be more harrowing; at least you 
aren’t slotted for a body bag fitting
somewhere in the Hindu Kush. Demo-
graphically and even geographically  
you’re all wrong for such a last act. Are 
probably not from Kansas, from god
awful west Louisiana, from anywhere
in the Kentucky fried heartland.
You’ve never seen a trailer park or fired a gun,
never did crystal meth, never carelessly
impregnated your underage girlfriend
because rubbers weren’t available at Stop N’ Go.
You are not necessarily of the opinion that God hates fags.
No, you talk the talk or at least
try to and wait for signals from
somewhere far away
and unbearably cool, even if that only means
wearing the most unthinkable shoes
ever thought of. And yet
who doesn’t end up a like a tarnished icon
milking applause at a state fair? Who isn’t
Bobby Vinton in Sacramento?
The Beach Boys in Springfield, Illinois?
Andy Warhol just before he put his wig on the last time?





Nessun dorma - Puccini
sung by Luciano Pavarotti

Sunday, April 6, 2014

Dance Fetish

Fetish 30 x 40 cm - mixed media




DANCE

In the midst of our multicultural festival
there’s an ageing overweight lady
dancing in the street alone, parade music floating
by on floats, and the homeless people  
are never without their bottle
of blue-label vodka and who always seem to be
shit-faced and hung-over at the same time.
Like having the flu everyday for the rest of your life.
I think that’s when I would stop. When I couldn’t
tell the difference between ecstasy and its punishment. 
I usually hate crowds, the teeming whatever, the pullulating
throng, but today I feel serene, almost scarily tolerant.
The dancing lady’s wearing a string of plastic flowers around her neck
and Karin’s photographing her and people smile but don’t shake
heads or mock or they simply ignore her, because the sun’s shining 
there are dozens of colors surging and everyone’s drinking
beer or Brazilian cocktails, getting high on whatever’s available
and judgment’s not an option; judgment, at this point, would kill. 





Opening Sequence Robert Altman's "The Company"
"Tensile Involvement"