Curator Statement

This is a large painting that should really be seen in person. I first saw it in San Francisco where Ken’s work was being featured in an international exhibition and was struck by it for several reasons, quite apart from it being more than two meters high and towering over me. Many years ago I used to be a photographer and to this day it is a serious hobby - which means I am always evaluating shapes, composition and form either in nature or in art. Of Ken's paintings in my collection, this one is most clearly the work of a master graphic designer and international art director. The apparent simplicity of the two halves, the zen message that less is more, the red semi-circle that could be a sun, a rising sun or a samurai helmet, or Uluru supported on sandstone strata, or indeed a bridge. The metallic grey background of the upper half of the painting is the colour of the actual Sydney Harbour Bridge, and could even be the actual paint that’s used to cover the bridge. The jade sea of the harbor is carefully chosen … a characteristic Done blue would have resulted in a trite red, white and blue composition. Ken has in fact created a superb monochromatic graphic plus two colours – the upper half of black and grey plus the red semi-circle while the lower half reverses the balance, so that the jade sea occupies as much canvas as the grey above, and the white hand balances the red. These two most famous icons of Sydney feature constantly in Ken’s work, but for me this painting most clearly establishes the relationship between the two. The colour and composition of the work reduces content to the bare minimum, yet allows for infinite meaning within each iconic shape. It is a painting that stops people in their tracks when they first see it – the size of the work plus the immediacy of the hand-like foreground is a literal show-stopper, so I try to hang it where people will come across it unexpectedly around a corner or by opening a door that leads directly to it.