The Brilliant Painter - Ken Buhler

Many years ago, more than I'd like to acknowledge, I was a printmaker. I'd attended The Cranbrook Academy of Art for my MFA. And following that I was invited to The MacDowell Colony. MacDowell, which is Heaven on Earth for artists, is situated in Peterborough, NH., on beautiful rolling hills, and woods near Mt. Monadnock. It is in this glorious setting, that artists of all types, are allowed to create their works without interuption. I was there with some fascinating and talented people including composers W. Burle Marx, Gail Kubick, and Thomas Oboe Lee, writers Madison Smart Bell and Orville Schell, and visual artists Virginia Buchan, Susan Roth and Ken Buhler. My studio, next to a Hopper-esque hill with a Red Barn, connected with Ken's. And when I heard his Pat Metheny playing , I'd counter with some Milton Nascimento. He might play some Aretha... I'd put on some Jarrett. In short we became great friends. And while we'd leave each other alone to create our Art, there were times when I would go check out Ken's work and maybe even watch him create. This was always very interesting as Ken might seemingly have a piece completed only to demolish it with a few strokes of his brush. How many great images could this guy come up with? Apparently quite a few. As I mentioned earlier, it has been many years. Ken has been painting, drawing, creating monotypes, exhibiting and teaching throughout. His works are terribly special. Ken is a great painter and friend, and so it is my privilege to be highlighting him here. You may want to start off with the video piece which might give you an idea as to how he creates. Then move on to the drawings, monotypes, and paintings.

Here's what Ken had to say about a few of the recent drawings:

"The series is called "Notes From The Edge Of The World" and is inspired by the Ireland trip. Below is a statement I wrote about this work, particularly the last paragraph. The title of the series was inspired by the view from our cottage. I told someone there that it felt like the edge of the world, and they said actually that if you drew a line straight north from where I was standing, I wouldn't hit land until the Arctic.

The statement:

My relationship to abstraction has been changing in recent years. Sources in the physical world have become more prominent as catalysts in my process of making a painting or drawing. The first manifestation of this in my work came after a trip to Tulum, Mexico.

At this time, I became fascinated with the meandering and convoluting lines of the ossified brain coral that lay washed up on the beach. Months later, without conscious intention, these forms found their way into my painting through the rhythmical movement of my hand, almost as a mimic to the linear convolutions of the coral (that I was seeing everyday now at home as I had transported a great deal of it from Mexico).

This connection to the coral was sustained and evolved through a series of paintings and drawings aptly called the Coral Series (2005 - 2007).

Paying attention to the natural world is not a new thing to me in my work, but with the Coral Series, there came a departure from the way this interest had manifested itself in the past. “Process” became a direct guide (as opposed to a discreet image) and this new focus seems to have revitalized my studio practice.

This impulse continued to evolve during the past summer as I spent a month on an artist’s residency in Ireland. There I worked along the northwest coast, in daily contact with the fascinating tide pools, and the marine life and fossils that are a part of that environment. Soon this experience was filtering into my work.

Since I couldn’t really bring it home with me, I photographed and filmed extensively the layered images created by waves, creatures, and vegetation flowing over a substrate of amazing geological forms.

Though I have not resolved this new body of work enough to include it in my application, the nature of this new influence is turning out, as with the Coral Series, to be more experiential and less imagistic in its import.

In addition to the direct visual stimulation of the environment I encountered in Ireland, I was energized by the tangible presence of the ancient history that literally simmers right at the surface there - in the form of Neolithic tombs, ruins of castles and abbeys, abundant fossils, and a vivid geological history.

I felt a strong sense of a time on earth when all was not charted and documented - when the “terra incognita” of the world left mapmakers and scientists with only the option of imaginative and artistic speculation.

I guess there is romance in the mystery of not knowing what lies over the horizon, and it resonates with the sense I have of my own role as an artist –

a feeling that I am a chronicler of something important that has yet to be revealed –

a way of seeing, thinking, or feeling that I hope others need to know to help them understand better.

Though I am not sure I could say what this is, I can only hope that looking at my pictures will allow it to come to light."

Ken will be exhibiting his works this Fall at
Lesley Heller Gallery N.Y.C.

Find out more about the artist at:

www.kenbuhler.net