I'm an artist living in Philadelphia, PA, 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 like 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. Most of my work since late 2006 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
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 10-20 years seemed vapid, intellectually both haughty and hollow. Work from nature
seemed, at least in potential, far more honest, felt and rewarding.
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.
Initially I was 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, words without substance. Most of the ambition was strictly in the huge amount of
verbiage that accompanied 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 began 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 wouldn'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. But 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
was also the stigma of any type of nature-based, especially 'wildlife', 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 had
lost the large live-in studio that I'd used for my abstract work. 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.
For the first few years my naturalistic work was more tentative than I liked. But that was because
I felt a need to be true to birds, to not start taking stylistic shortcuts and liberties without really
understanding birds. I didn't want them to be mannequins to hang paintings on. Since late 2009 I've felt
more comfortable both with birds and with watercolor. Watercolor is a new 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. I think that finally started to occur in late 2009.
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 me 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.