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, June 28, 2015

The Dude Abides in a Globalized World



Verstrickt - Entangled 22 x 32 cm - watercolor on Yupo




THE DUDE ABIDES IN A GLOBALIZED WORLD

The heat’s rising appareled in odors
of fabric softener, hamburger smoke, stagnant creek
water wafting up to us through the leaves   
as we pass the bong and sip White Russians    
all day long. Thus without benefit of lucid transition   
we’re curled up near a dovecote on a Greek island
or leaning against the Tower of Pisa. You see, Dude,
we could be anywhere and still think we’re somewhere else,
Globalization not merely a “chaotic drift of technologies”  
but a series of artifacts and flavors meeting up
in one distinctly otherish location, each object 
   roughly positioned in its own
immaculate strangeness. There’s a corn dog stand
nearby, and twenty yards away a van
   from which Tex-Mex is dispensed
to Swedish tourists. It’s jazz made in Algeria,
Dude, a Wagner festival in Seattle. I’ve been working on this poem,
gentle reader, since landfall and have no idea if it’s good enough
for you nor am I sure what it “means” half the time
thoughts like seedlings  
scattered over white paper, struggling to take root
and go crazy, yet we’re happy here, the Dude and I, including
a modest contingent of groupies down on the beach,
partly because it smells like jasmine and warm nutmeg
   and partly because there’s a bowling alley adjacent to
a shattered amphitheater its broken statue
   of Marlon Brando wearing sunglasses. 




Sunday, June 7, 2015

Blue Rondo A La Turk



 
Lichtblick - Beacon 100 x 80 cm (39 1/4 x 31 1/2'') Acryl/Oilpastel/Ink on canvas


PAGAN EPISTLE

Do you remember when our knees touched
beneath that faded sundress you always used to wear?
I think it had belonged to your mother
or possibly to an older sister who, curiously enough,
became born again, gave up pleasure, gave the dress to you.
Funny how some people court rejection while others,
namely you, reject courtship.
Okay, I’ll stop.
Anyway, there were midges, and a golden light
dripping down manicured hedges onto warm grass,
the boxwood maze with its structured pauses, sweat drying 
in the spicy breeze, a man in motley playing Shakespeare on a lute.
I woke up to the noise of a coffee bean grinder, the scent of frying bacon.

Nobody should live
merely to be overwhelmed by contingent
fluids or barbecued flesh which of course
we love to eat
or the pressure of the perfect curve
or the tanned skin
both of which we love to touch, given half a chance—
is there anything else we can do?—
ask the sun, you might have said, had you ever
   answered a question with an answer.
Okay, I’ll stop.