The Ashe County painter believes art is a sacred and healing endeavor | Photos by Compelling Story
He starts the music. It is a song by Sleeping At Last. His wife Fleur brings a lamp as he begins stirring white acrylic paint in a large plastic cup. He stirs, considers, and stirs some more. I begin to wonder if he’s reconsidering allowing our presence in that small sacred space where so few but him had gone since the day he christened it as a studio.
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“I’m not used to anyone watching me paint,” he muses before finally making the first few strokes of white on a canvas he had painted black days before.
We joined Ken for a glimpse into his Warrensville workspace in early November while, as he describes it, “the last of the goldenrod fell.” He describes the explosion of beauty in the field last spring behind his home and how just weeks before we visited, the goldenrod had still been ablaze with color. Now the winter browning of the field and hibernating of his family’s honey bees has Ken thinking about seasons again.
Not just those seasons that sweep through the High Country with beauty and soft brutality, but those that have swept through his life, inspiring joy, metaphor, and grief. In other words: inspiring art.
He is just beginning a new series of paintings in his outdoor studio–a straw-strewn section of his barn where the chickens sometimes wander in. Thus he jokingly calls it “The Chicken Shit Studio” but in his more serious moments he refers to it as a sacred space.
It is an uninsulated room lit only by a single bare bulb and/or by whatever sunlight is allowed through the gaps in the barn wall clapboards. The only decorations are colorful fly paper dangling from the ceiling, random errant strokes of paint that have grazed the walls, and whatever canvas of a painting project he happens to be working on at the moment.
He enjoys the space year-round, even in winter, and even with the frustration and the threat of smearing acrylic because of how slowly paint dries in the cold. He loves it because he can feel the seasons. And that’s what he says his new series of abstract paintings will emphasize – the importance of experiencing the gift of both pleasant and painful seasons.
“I am learning to embrace the seasons. Sometimes we feel like we’re in a season of winter. Winter sucks. Everything’s dead, he says. “Out in this field right now goldenrod is dropping seeds for the next spring time. You feel like nothing’s happening but in the dormancy there’s a season of new promise. I wanted to create a season series that talked about the seasons of our lives and that the seasons actually reflect the goodness of God in each of the seasons we face.”
The Beginnings
Twenty years ago in a one-bedroom upstairs studio in New Zealand, Ken began his journey into abstract art with what his wife, Fleur, said was this simple pronouncement: “I think I’m going to start painting.”
Producing a painting a day at times, Ken’s inner landscape poured out onto the canvas, sometimes surprising even himself. Within two years, he had amassed about 20 large finished artworks. Friends and family soon requested them and Ken, always painting for the pure joy and satisfaction of expression, would give them away freely.
The New Zealand couple and their two kids had left their home in Christchurch in 2011 to pursue Ken’s day job of film-making in America, moving to Austin in 2011.
Ken turned a corner of their garage into a painting space and picked up where he’d left off. Spurred on by Fleur and by his friends in the creative community of Austin, Ken continued in this newfound passion with considerable skill for creating a feeling on canvas. He says he wanted to explore the whole canvas, even the edges – a practice that seems to add a three dimensional, interactive quality to his pieces.
When the Robinsons moved to Ashe County two years ago, Ken was surprised by how the High Country reminded him of the landscape of home.
The road to their home winds alongside the New River and miles of old growth and rhododendron as it cuts through the Warrensville hills. Landscape like this found in the High Country runs through his veins.
“My grandfather and uncles were all farmers, growing crops as well as livestock,” Ken says. “When we talked about moving here we began looking at farmhouses and dreaming of a barn like this one, of beekeeping, of chickens, and maybe owning a few sheep.”
The Beauty and Brokenness That Feed the Artist
In this new series of paintings, Ken is attempting to explore the implications of life seasons–seasons that can stretch into years or half a lifetime. Having moved around a lot with his mother and sister as a child, Ken thought a lot about his father. He finally tracked him down as an adult, only to discover his father was a sad, lonely recluse.
Ken describes his life seasons as waves – waves that felt like pain but that with time he came to understand as necessary to understand love.
“In New Zealand I used to surf a lot. I remember being out in the water one time and I could see a large wave coming. Behind that I saw another large wave. Behind that were more really big waves. I couldn’t escape,” Ken said. “It scared the crap out of me. It was one of those days that I’ll never forget the rest of my life.”
He realized the connection one night a year ago sitting by the backyard fire with crayons and paper, writing a letter to his late mom and dad that his counsellor had recommended but that he’d avoided doing for months. As he wrote about the ways the growing up years had broken him, something broke loose in him that night, and he realized it was God, sweeping him up like those strong, relentless waves.
“With this painting, I want to capture that feeling visually and viscerally. Not just a ‘you are loved by God’, but ‘you’re loved and loved and loved and loved and loved’ – in waves, just like those that day,” Ken says. “Art comes from a sense of wholeness in so many areas of your life and I want to reflect that wholeness to others–the flowing of God’s love and how that can penetrate our soul and bring healing.”
Sacred Spaces That Heal and Inspire
Restlessness has characterized the seasons of Ken’s life. He felt it again in their Ashe County home. But recently after returning to New Zealand for his mother’s funeral, something changed and he entered a new season. A year ago, he started going to counseling. He talks about the landscape of the surrounding mountains–the landscape he wanted to leave–as what triggered so many of the good things that have happened.
“Maybe I’m being nostalgic.” Ken says. “But I’m very much a believer in sacred places and remembering and going back to those places where milestones have happened in your life.”
The landscape of the High Country that has reminded him so much of home and of regrets has now been transformed into a reminder of God’s goodness in the midst of pain. And of God’s beauty.
“Beauty stimulates the soul. Beauty triggers beauty,” Ken says. “And it reminds you of the One who’s truly beautiful–which I believe is God, the creator. And the healer.”
And in terms of healing and milestones, it might have been that night with the silly crayon, an old notepad, and a roaring fire that signaled this new season in Ken’s life.
“Being out here in the mountains triggers memories still,” he says. “It helps me to remember where I’ve come from, how I’ve grown, and how good God is and what he’s done in my life.”
