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, January 29, 2017

Walk Unafraid



 
untitled mixed media on canvas board 60 x 50 cm



UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER?

Someone advises: just stay calm—and this in the midst
of gross injustice or shitty divorce; or when stepped on
by sadistic cop or bad ass boss—stay calm?
Am I supposed to beg for mercy,
like an animal baring his throat? Are humans
known to be merciful? Are there
enough white flags in the Principal’s office?
Do they push back when slapped around
by a bully boy southeaster? Or hang limp as boiled pasta?
White means you’re outta here, you give up.
You want to live to run another day. You gild the lily liver yellow.
Sometimes you have to brandish a fist, crack a knuckle
on some asshole’s chin, pull the Bill of Rights out of your boot—
who can say when a reflective surface might catch your glimpse?




Sunday, January 15, 2017

Vacation in the Tropics


Vacation in the Tropics - Urlaub in den Tropen 36 x 48 cm mixed media on paper





LIFE IS A BEACH
                                    
First, an unconventional
colloquial statement
what the fuck is this shit
(watch your language, girl)
as the wind just about tears
your head off, bleak Baltic
sandbar shreds and tatters
of foam sliced finer by the cutting
edge of a force seven son of a
beach, yes, a beach, eaten alive by flux & reflux
everything the same & not
the same unlike Lesbos where in light
that penetrated and pealed back the phenomenal
world there was nothing underneath and
everything stayed unique, unambiguous, loads of sand
three miles long, more or less bare of people
the sea a liquefaction of quiet blue silk
a pair of immoderately attractive
lesbians a few yards from us
across a dirt road where they rented
a nice little house, every morning the more fem of the two
stomping off to the bakery in high
heels & mini skirt & in a huff
her tall boyishly butch elegantly dark lover stretched out
in bed reading a magazine, smoking a doob
on Mykonos Paradise Beach was a visit to the zoo
here a penis, there a breast, white powdery sand
filtering thorough fingers, filling the cracks, killing us
a clichéd metaphor but useful
think of hour glasses and sandy windswept sundials, etc.
in the hotel bar a PowerPoint
teaser on the efficacy of mass delusion
had us begging for more, voting for less
the idea of progress creates trust in the future   makes
credit (growth) possible   speaking of Australia
when I was ten or eleven I wondered who 
would win in a fight a great white or a killer 
whale and then I saw a human
so big space made room for him
while he preened like a model
like a priest who relishes
the contradictions of his faith.  
If you believe in my beach, I’ll believe in yours.




Sunday, January 8, 2017

Stars and Stripes



Stars and Stripes 30 x 40 cm gouache/oil pastel/charcoal on paper



A BAG OF POTATO CHIPS

A voice in my head lobbied against it—
the voice of bad conscience it
was sometimes and voice of good news
other times, voice of my wife full-time
it was a relatively short voice that
seemed to think it was tall—but I jumped anyway,
slamming my knee against an outcrop
of porous stone. I ask you to imagine physical
agony as a location, a spot on the map,  
that’s where I was ( Pain City, Ohio, sounds about right,
shops preening with leather and steel devices,   
unyielding plastic, ferocious dildos, bull whips, etc.), and I’m
hobbling down the mountain side, hungry as a bear, thinking only
about the rolled up bag of potato
chips, contents half-eaten, on the passenger seat of our filthy little Fiat.
Down before the shadows could catch us up
the voice said “Boy, you should never jump in the mountains,”
threatening to report me to her grandfather, severe pedagogue
   of the alpine heights, a short man
who also seemed to think he was tall. I could only
answer with crunching noises, having just
shoved a handful of chips into my mouth.
Barbecue-flavored, if I’m right, with just a hint of cheese.