I may be the first professional artist in our family, but I'm certainly not the first to work with the land and the sea. I come from a centuries-long line of fishermen and farmers who made their homes here on Martha's Vineyard, and was raised on my family's farm in West Tisbury.
With the Island as a backdrop to my youth and as part of the landscape myself, I grew up with a different perspective of life on Martha's Vineyard. The appreciation is more than aesthetic because there's an Island ancestry that speaks to me. When I paint, I see all these things left in the landscape: the barns, the trees, the fields, the water. These places are full of stories and history—not only mine, but of generations past. To me, every landscape of Martha's Vineyard has a memory attached, and this is what draws me to the subjects I choose. The memory left in the landscape is what inspires me to paint it.
After college, I returned to Martha's Vineyard and worked for the Martha's Vineyard Times, illustrating favorite local hikes off the beaten track for "The Walks" column. This began my journey of rediscovering the many forgotten vistas the Island had to offer. These overlooked places are the subjects I found most interesting and inspiring, and have become the foundation of my current body of work.
A graduate of Rhode Island School of Design and the RISD Honors Program in Rome, Ken lives on the Vineyard year-round with his wife Cathleen and their son Broden, who was born in 2007. He works full-time as a painter as well as an illustrator for children's books. His work is shown at the Granary Gallery.