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"My sphere of work includes drawing, graphic and painting.
The landscape surrounding my residence and workplace is still a source of inspiration for my pictures"
Ken Denning
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| KEN DENNING |
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Ken Denning has in all his activities as artist been preoccupied with
the landscape, which he persistently has sought out and interpreted
through different artistic effects.
With a take-off in graphic, etching and drawing became the preferred
mode of expression. The intimate format inspired to work with series of
landscape, which among others were interpreted through the textual and
condensed line of the etching needle. What is common for the approach
to these works is an organization of the picture surface in contrasts
to the open and the closed, the organic and the linear and none the
less the rich exploration of the differences in shade between the black
ˆ white poles of graphic art, from the velvety blacks towards the
whiteness of the paper. The landscape is to be recognize in a sober
noticeable form, where the different elements are set out. But exactly
Ken Denning‚s ability to stretch out the picture surface in adversary
and inaction, gives the picture a special insistent present.
In the nineties Ken Denning highly begins to adopt a more experimental
attitude to the graphic expression. Different graphic techniques are
often employed in one and the same picture, e.g. lithography,
serigraphy, and photogravure or drypoint and woodcut. Moreover, in
several of these works photos of landscape are used. These are further
worked up with oil color and acrylic. From the work with an even
surface, the picture composition now becomes even more a composition
based on shiftings and overlaps, which gives a different perception of
space. The characteristic daubs create a distance to the basis of the
landscape. However, we still find the landscape either through the
underlying photo or through the basic characteristics of the landscape,
horizontal line or vegetation, which is often accentuated by means of
expressive applied color. In some of the works, the oil color ends up
taking over the canvas, which gives „pure‰ paintings.
Ken Denning has several times visit the Ferry Islands. The encounter
with the violent nature and the rapid changing wetter leaves
characteristic traces in the conception of the landscape. The rugged
clefts and the tremendous rocks, which rise to the sky, make the
horizontal line tip from horizontal to level. The shift and the
vigorous get through in the picture as extensive stretching between
contrasts of form and color.
Through the nineties, particularly the color is subject to experiments.
The earth colors increasingly have to retreat to strong colors which
are perceived as rhythmical outlines and sounds.
Eva Bræmer-Jensen
Curator/Vice Manager
Trapholt Art Museum. Denmark.
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