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"Jacked"

21 Artworks

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These are large gouache paintings on paper that I created between August 2019 and November 2020. This was the first time that I worked in gouache at this scale. It was a refreshing opportunity to work on a large scale without the fuss of say, building, stretching, sizing and priming canvas for example. These drawings allowed me to have more spontaneity and the ability to create many more large immersive images in a shorter period of time. Taken together they become both a yearlong diary and an exploration of motifs that might be seen more effectively on a larger scale. I began this work as a body of work that might consider the social changes that has been evolving since our current president had taken office and specifically about how it would be exhibited after the 2020 election and whether I would need to anticipate a new administration or a continuation of the current administration. But as the scale of the pandemic began to compete and merge with the Trump phenomenon, I gradually came to see things less as something that was tethered to social change and more as something that was a phenomenal tension between the human and animal worlds; a greater existential struggle for us as a species within a mute parallel world that we thought we had left behind thanks to the promise of technology.

"JESUS CHRIST"

16 Artworks

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“Jesus Christ!” is an exclamation of anger, surprise or astonishment, while also a reference to an historical figure that was apparently sent to our planet in order to save humanity? The work in this collection (On exhibit 9-15 to 10-31, 2022) thus takes its cues from an observatory perspective of the newly minted, convoluted belief systems rolling out before our eyes on a daily basis in a yet unsaved or dystopian world. Zoot Coffee 5 Elm Street Camden, Maine 04849 September 15 - October 31, 2022 Open Every Day 7 am to 3 pm

"Low Energy"

11 Artworks

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My series on the Strategic Petroleum Reserve is part of a general series of works of mine that employs the motif of a schematic rendering of geological layers. I’ve always been fascinated by geology in general and how the earth has been formed. As an artist I am also interested in schematic rendering or a diagrammatic language as a way of “picturing” things that we might not be able to literally see. For me there is a bonus with certain kinds of schematic renderings and in particular with diagramming geologic strata, how you can be free to really render each geologic layer whatever color, hue, pattern or shade strikes your fancy. It’s possible that actual geologists have a systematic approach to their color scheme choices, but I’m assuming that they really do not and my approach enables me to use this motif as an excuse to paint pretty stripes!

"Relief for The Portland Sufferers"

14 Artworks

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A body of work created specifically for an exhibition celebrating the 150th anniversary of the Portland Public Library. Each artist was invited to find an object or work of art from the library's collection or archive to create new work from. I found a scathing, bitter letter from the south, expressing contempt and just deserts towards this northern city, against the destruction and loss of life endured within the writer’s home state of Alabama during the war, a letter of response to the devastating great fire that destroyed much of Portland, Maine on July 4, 1866. This letter was in stark contrast to the hundreds of letters written in support, many containing monetary donations, of relief for the "Portland Sufferers". All of the original letters have been cataloged and housed in the library's archive. This guided me to explore contemporary hate speech and the problems of patriotism and ex-patriotism all reconfigured as old, worn, singed artifacts.

"The Shroud Cycle: Let There Be War"

14 Artworks

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Experimenting with creating inkblots on rice paper I discovered, after inadvertently blotting two sheets at once, a way of creating modules I could arrange, side-by-side, into symmetrical compositions. I soon began to fold larger sheets, blot them and then arrange them unfolded as larger groupings. Within these patterned fields I painted the image of a “jacked” Jesus Christ. The combination of this motif and the mirrored staining shortly brought to my mind an association with the Shroud of Turin, the well-known Christian relic, which, having been stored as a folded fabric for hundreds of years, had a similar stain patterning. The Shroud Cycle then is an aesthetic search or process within an associative context. For the Shroud Cycle I would create themed groupings of "ink blot" based pieces. Each group would fit an exhibition venue. “Who is My Avatar?” at the Cyr Gallery of the Bangor Public Library, would explore vertical compositions of primary figures. “Let There Be War” at Zoot Coffee would include wide panoramic arrangements of horizontally reflected patterns that suggest the theater of battle. “Why Are We Here?” at Cynthia Winings Gallery's cathedral-like second floor barn space would consist of a hanging Jacob’s Ladder contraption whose design would be loosely proportionate to the Shroud of Turin, which consists of one long fabric panel that originally shrouded a body from toe to head, continuous over the top of the head and back down behind the body, ending at the body’s heels. “O Earth” at the Sohns Gallery would consider the suggestion of the earth as a final resting place or a current repository for an endless array of human made structures or waste products.

"The Shroud Cycle: Who is My Avatar"

15 Artworks

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Experimenting with creating inkblots on rice paper I discovered, after inadvertently blotting two sheets at once, a way of creating modules I could arrange, side-by-side, into symmetrical compositions. I soon began to fold larger sheets, blot them and then arrange them unfolded as larger groupings. Within these patterned fields I painted the image of a “jacked” Jesus Christ. The combination of this motif and the mirrored staining shortly brought to my mind an association with the Shroud of Turin, the well-known Christian relic, which, having been stored as a folded fabric for hundreds of years, had a similar stain patterning. The Shroud Cycle then is an aesthetic search or process within an associative context. For the Shroud Cycle I would create themed groupings of "ink blot" based pieces. Each group would fit an exhibition venue. “Who is My Avatar?” at the Cyr Gallery of the Bangor Public Library, would explore vertical compositions of primary figures. “Let There Be War” at Zoot Coffee would include wide panoramic arrangements of horizontally reflected patterns that suggest the theater of battle. “Why Are We Here?” at Cynthia Winings Gallery's cathedral-like second floor barn space would consist of a hanging Jacob’s Ladder contraption whose design would be loosely proportionate to the Shroud of Turin, which consists of one long fabric panel that originally shrouded a body from toe to head, continuous over the top of the head and back down behind the body, ending at the body’s heels. “O Earth” at the Sohns Gallery would consider the suggestion of the earth as a final resting place or a current repository for an endless array of human made structures or waste products.

"Tumult"

16 Artworks

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The idea to create the works in this collection here emerged out of a fascination with the action of pouring ink onto rice paper and seeing how it would slowly spread and create irregular shapes and margins. I had first started using black sumi ink in the early 90s, but back then I preferred watercolor paper to rice paper, which generally resisted long calligraphic gestures. Thus some of the rice paper that I had purchased at that time became lost among my studio materials for decades until recently, when I rediscovered it and had a more open enough mind to try and figure out why this particular support was even invented.

"W.T.H.J.H.?"

57 Artworks

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Works included in a print publication I created to present a visual diary of my experience of the Trump presidency. To purchase or view the publication : https://www.blurb.com/b/10455629-what-the-hell-just-happened

7X7 LA

7 Artworks

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April 7, 2016, Kenny Cole & Amy Bergen

Launched in 2015 to facilitate a new kind of interdisciplinary collaboration, each 7×7 invites one visual artist and one writer to engage in a two-week creative conversation. The format, inspired by Surrealist games of the early 20th century, challenges participants to improvise, in their respective disciplines, a spontaneous story that pushes into ever-wilder imaginative terrain. Every finished 7×7 is singular, unclassifiable, and wholly original.

2022 Large Paintings on Canvas

6 Artworks

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DD Kinsman

44 Artworks

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Lament

4 Artworks

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In 2019, a kayaker, on Highland Lake in Bridgton, Maine, found a dead bald eagle and loon chick floating on the surface. Biologists determined a loon likely attacked and killed the eagle to protect its chick, as loons are known to fiercely defend their young. This event is unusual because eagles are often the predators of loon offspring, and loons rarely kill eagles. It was determined that the Loon stabbed the eagle in the heart with its beak. Forensic measurements found that the fatal wound was very consistent of the size and shape of a loon’s bill. 


As an artist who often taps into the societal zeitgeist and human representations and symbolic borrowings from the natural world, I found this event deeply allegorical, particularly in reference to present day leadership and political maneuverings. My project then, would simply be to represent the event as a work of art and let the experience of viewing the work hold the psychological, political and structural dynamics in relation to a larger societal analysis, narratives or timelines.


My multi-panel “Lament” is my most ambitious take on this theme, expanding the moment of action to a series of murals that depict imagined moments before during and after this event, as a sequential representation. My artistic process involves first folding together a stack of four pieces of traditional Chinese Xuan paper then blotting the stack with ink to produce four repeated kaleidoscopic symmetries that then are mounted to four canvas panels. Each set of four panels makes up a scene. I then render the scene with gouache watercolor, sometimes maintaining the symmetries, other times blocking them or camouflaging them within elements of the scene. All living things reflect symmetries within their bio forms and structures and by folding the paper before blotting it I can establish an array of symmetrical shapes and forms from which to locate figures and place them in the scene.


I chose the title "Lament" from a possible origin of the word “Loon” from the Norwegian word "lom," which comes from Old Norse "lōmr," potentially related to English "lament," referring to the loon's distinctive, plaintive sound. For me this is an expression of dismay, helplessness and sorrow of current times with regard to violence committed around the world against unarmed civilians, authoritarian leadership denying due process and human rights and general problems, distress and xenophobic responses to vulnerable people escaping poverty and violence around the world.


Closer to home, the historic representation of the bald eagle within our own national identity and consciousness, as a state standard, emblem and icon and endless commercial, regional and institutional representations, places an intense layering of projected meaning onto this creature as one of fear, strength and power. Considering the historic paths to equality, justice and freedom from oppression, the instincts of the defending loon as a lesser apex predator against a greater apex predator speaks to the potential of the lesser to ultimately triumph over the dominance of the greater, despite the innate advantages such a being might hold.


The ultimate conclusion of the eagle attack is tragic, with the object of prey a failed acquisition, mortally wounded itself and the greater power, itself too, defeated and destroyed. Going forward, as an artistic representation, this depiction can now deflect against and rewrite the standard tropes of dominance, oppression and power as represented by anthropomorphic and symbolic references to nature.



Kenny Cole


May 2025

Monhegan Artist's Residency 2012

66 Artworks

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In the Spring of 2012 I embarked for 5 weeks on Monhegan Island in Maine as a recipient of the Monhegan Artist's Residency program. Here is the work created during this residency. It is a collection of drawings and silk screen prints. Each morning I typically created a small drawing, followed by a day of screen printing. The bulk of my time was spent exploring silk screen printing using the very basic techniques of cut paper and "Drawing Fluid" stenciling.

Occupy

11 Artworks

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October 7

6 Artworks

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Pandemic Sketchbook

57 Artworks

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From February 14 to May 9, 2020 I painted in a 60-page sketchbook. The start date was of no significance other than it was time to start a new sketchbook after completing a previous one. As the Coronavirus began to spread, my sketchbook began to feel its influence. By the time I completed filling this sketchbook I realized that it contained a visual diary of sorts that captured imagery that expressed for me, some of the anxiousness and anxieties I was feeling, as things were initially dismissed, gradually became lethal and then finally became full blown. My ongoing imagery morphed and new motifs were added and transformed by it.

Presidential Transition 2021

15 Artworks

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The ink drawings in this collection, for me represent the end game of a brief session of artmaking that occurred between election day 2020 and Inauguration day 2021. The idea to make black and white works after painting with lots of color previously started innocently enough. I had just randomly been shuffling things around in my studio and found a pad of Sumi paper that I had purchased years ago but had never really cracked open. I'm getting so now that I like to just run through a pad of paper from beginning to end. It becomes a series of sorts, if only, in that whatever comes out of proceeding this way produces work that is all the same size or scale and on the same kind of surface. For about a decade starting in the early 90’s I had drawn a lot with Sumi ink, but it was always in conjunction with watercolor paint and on a cold press watercolor paper not on Sumi paper. I had bought this pad thinking that I might try it, but then a newfound fascination with opaque gouache watercolor paint distracted me for another decade and I never really did anything with Sumi paper until this past fall. Though the discovery of the Sumi pad was a chance occurrence, I knew immediately that I was ready for it. For the last four years I had been creating colorful depictions of our president, hesitantly at first, but gradually, grudgingly these depictions or inclusions proliferated in my work. I felt that I could finally stop depicting the president after the election results even though I knew that things were obviously not over. “Stop the Steal” was the new animal and it created a knot in my stomach as I transitioned over from cerulean blue twitter birds, golden yellow hair do’s and fire engine red neck ties to defiant muscular characters and a revival of the flag draped coffins that I had first painted after the second Gulf War. Here were throngs of die-hard supporters, who, it felt to me, were fighting a losing battle, a battle that was starting to look like it would take us all down. It was truly depressing! Free from primary color palette that produced all of my Trump tropes and on to parades and burly protests, the prospect of dropping back to the monochrome explorations that black ink would provide me, it felt like an opportunity to think in a less distracted and vibrantly emotional way. The election had happened, but resistance was festering. I could feel the darkness descending. We were definitely in a societal transition and the air was thick with the hot acrid breath of confederacy and supremacy. What were the aspects of this post election campaign, stripped of its red, white and blue fanfare that could be seen through the murky lens of Sumi ink? From the perspective of my drawing table it was dark, shiny and smoky.

Sketchbook Project 2010 / Theme: "Revenge"

2 Artworks

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My chosen theme was "Revenge" I started out with a letter from Joan of Arc to the Hussites and will finish with Martin Luther's 95 Theses. The idea of revenge is loosely referenced: a battle of ideology as a chronicle of random cycles of war and revenge... 

Sketchbook Project 2021 / Theme: "End Times I Say"

3 Artworks

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https://hyperallergic.com/806540/the-ineffable-charm-of-an-artists-sketchbook-brooklyn-art-library/ https://brooklynartlibrary.org/ https://www.gofundme.com/f/sketchbookproj In 2006, undergraduate art students Steven Peterman and Shane Zucker began the “Sketchbook Project.” Over the next 17 years, the initiative turned into a collection of over 50,000 works by more than 30,000 artists. Their contributions ranged from love letters and diary entries to graphic novels and intricately-detailed masterpieces, all inside the pages of five-by-seven-inch, paper-bound books. The Brooklyn Art Library (28 Frost St.), has closed its physical home of over a decade, located just south of McCarren Park, in the midst of the pandemic. The library’s answering machine confirms the closure with this message: “Closed to the public for covid until further notice.” “Like so many, COVID has impacted how we manage our physical library space while continuing to foster an inclusive creative community. It’s led us to decide that while we’ll need to close our physical library space in Brooklyn on February 25th, 2022, we’ll in turn be opening the doors for much more growth and sustainability long-term,” a joint statement from board president Jess Sugarman, founder Steven Peterman, and director Jenna Carrens on the library’s website reads. On Monday, February 28th, 2022, the moving trailer that we were using to transport the entire Sketchbook Project collection from Brooklyn to St. Pete caught fire while driving through Baltimore. First, we are incredibly thankful that everyone involved is safe and not hurt. We are working on getting answers to why this happened, but from what we can tell, it was a devastating accident. Luckily AT LEAST 70% of the collection was saved by a bunch of volunteers and firefighters who heroically moved the books off as fast as possible at the scene. A local church then helped move each box of books into the parking lot one by one. Lost in the fire were all of our office supplies and around 7,000 books of the collection. We are assessing the damage, but it will take us months to sort through this. We are hopeful that this number drops as we go through the books. We have decided to fully shut down The Sketchbook Project and Brooklyn Art Library non-profit and gift the collection to other amazing institutions that can better care for the books. https://www.taubemuseum.org/index.html Brooklyn Art Library 2622 Fairfield Avenue South, St. Petersburg, FL, 33712, United States hello@brooklynartlibrary.org 

“G.A.G. & M.A.G.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.G.A."

11 Artworks

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In the fall of 2024 as the new election cycle loomed I found myself in that anxious shiftless state of mind where cleaning up my studio seemed to be all that I could muster in terms of creative activity. The timing was good in that I was in between taking down exhibitions, having had set up new exhibitions and was ready to contemplate a review of the year for “Impolitic: 2024” at Sidle House Gallery. My original plan for this show related to the events in the Middle East starting in 2023 and spilling over into 2024. By late October the election became more pressing on my psyche. Underlying both concerns had been an impulse to create work that takes into consideration longer stretches of time, greater histories of conflict and linkages of action/reaction and ultimately the rise and fall of power structures. In my cleaning and rearranging I came across boxes of vintage newspaper that I had accumulated from various construction projects on old homes, which I was holding onto for possible inclusion into some form of future works of art. In 2014 I had created a room-sized installation incorporating much of this vintage newspaper, but I had added to it since, thinking that I might want to revisit this media. There comes points in one’s art career and life when one has to reckon with one’s accumulations and my boxes of vintage newspaper’s time seemed to be presenting themselves as due for a do or die scenario. For better or worse I decided to do and began to envision a dense arrangement of ink printed imagery, cut out from old newspaper ads and articles, that might include figures and objects that would span a time period from the late 1800s to the 1980s and possibly to the present day. This would be a mashing of dozens of decades into a singular image that would depict a contemporary event, moment or ongoing conflict. Loosely in mind was cataclysm, destruction or violence involving piles of home furnishings, crowds of figures and machinery. In essence, a history of technological and social development or change that reflected or suggested that, despite certain advancements, human behavior hopelessly repeats its worst habits, an inability to develop peaceful coexistence and a tendency to address its problems through violence. As the election revealed a choice by the American public to embrace the spirit of belief that our society’s best moment was at a point in the past and that our focus should be to regain that footing, I conceived of my vintage newspaper collages as imagining a form of cyclical human behavior as an undercurrent of current events, all being depicted as nightmarish mash-up of old and new into one. Thinking of the linguistic evolution of the MAGA acronym I heard in my mind the phrase Gog and Magog, sensing that it must be biblical and wondering if its narrative could have any relationship to our current state. The many narratives found in the Wikipedia analysis qualified it perfectly for what I now saw as a new possible art series for me to explore, arisen from the cataclysms of 2023 into 2024 and a brand new societal pathway guided by nostalgia, faith and belief. MAGA on steroids would be G.A.G. & M.A.G.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.G.A. and I invite one and all to interpret the acronym as they please, taking the biblical and cultural narratives of Gog and Magog into account along with the idea that we often needlessly act in predictably poor ways again and again and again and again!