I'm an artist living in Philadelphia, PA, USA, and have studied art at City College of San Francisco,
University of California at Berkeley and Cornell University. I received graduate degrees in studio art
from the last two.
When I was a student and for many years after that my art was abstract/non-objective. I still love the art
that I did at that time and love many artists who work or have worked in that tradition. But I also did
representational work during all of my student years. So I've also had a great appreciation for work
done from life. The freedom and expressiveness of abstraction can be exhilarating. But so can working
from life, making some connection with your live subject, and getting it down on paper or canvas.
My current work is naturalistic. Almost all of my work of the last three years is based on birds that I've
seen. This is both an outgrowth of my longtime interest in birds and nature and a reaction against the
emptiness of the contemporary art world. This is not to say that there aren't very good artists working.
It's just that most of the art that seemed to get the attention of the high-art establishment over at least
the last ten years seemed vapid, intellectually both haughty and hollow. Work from nature seemed,
at least in potential, far more honest, felt and rewarding. For many years this introductory page
included examples of my abstract work. But I've now worked naturalistically for three years so
I have removed much reference to the older abstract work from this page. If you're interested check
the links at left.
Previous to my bird art I spent a number of years doing small, pen and ink drawings of insects that
I found. This work was, in retrospect, a transition from my abstract work to naturalistic work.
When I began it I was really just trying to help myself identify insects I found in the garden. In
drawing them I noticed aspects that I didn't otherwise see. This helped in identification. But I also
found that it seemed more honest than much of the contemporary art I was seeing. Yes I was just
drawing what I saw. There was no greater ambition. But much contemporary art seemed all ambition and no
accomplishment. Most of the ambition was strictly in the huge amount of verbiage that went with the work.
It never showed in the actual work itself. To me the emperor had no clothes. At least my insects had their
own clothes.
As I continued this work I did begin to see, and accentuate, some of the more abstract qualities of the insects that I drew. But this was still a far cry from my ambition in my older abstract work. Was it possible to combine the two? I thought about this for years and did very little art work. Then two things happened: I sold a large abstract painting that I was very fond of to a large corporation, and I realized that I could have my own gallery on the internet. I didn't have to spend half my time trying to get galleries to look at my work in order to get it some public exposure. This had been another thing that had troubled me years earlier at the height of my abstract painting. These two things convinced me to return to art. The question was: what was I going to paint and in what medium?
For years I had had it in the back of my mind, especially as I spent more time outside both birding and fishing, that I'd like to work with nature. I knew that this would be difficult but I also knew of great artists like Durer, Courbet and Homer who had used nature as subject. In the high-art world there is also the stigma of any type of nature-based art being a lower form of art. And I found that I really didn't like much of the so-called 'wildlife art' that I saw. Still much of it seemed more honest, more truthful to human experience than much of the trendy high-art that I was seeing. I decided to start with birds, mainly because I spent so much of my time looking at them. I also no longer had my large live-in studio, that I'd had for years. That made large oils more difficult. But I did have one room in my house that would certainly work for drawings. I also realized it would work for watercolors. So I could continue to paint but it wouldn't need to be on such a large scale as my older abstract work.
Over the last three years my work with birds has been more tentative than I'd like. But that's been
because I felt a need to be true to them, to not start taking stylistic shortcuts and liberties without
really understanding birds. I still have a long way to go but I'm getting more comfortable both with
birds and with watercolor. Watercolor is a new, but rich, medium for me. I'd experimented with it in
my undergraduaste days, but only briefly. It is difficult but rewarding. As I've worked in it over the
last few years I've continually wanted to be more expressive with it, as I used to be
with my abstract oils and acrylics. Finally I'm starting to do so. The watercolor to the left,
of a Lesser Yellowlegs and Solitary Sandpiper at Magee Marsh NWR in Ohio in 2009, takes stylistic liberties. I think that my future work
will head more in this direction. At the same time I hope to do more work from life, so that I know that
I'm continuing to be true to the birds I see, no matter how abstract they might eventually appear
on paper or canvas.
Most works are for sale. Most of my recent natualistic works are available at my online store. Some of my abstract drawings are also for sale there. For all other work please address all inquiries to Ken at Ken Januski. The links in left column lead you to more examples of my work. Sketches as well as my thoughts on art, birds, and nature can be found at my blog.