ABOUT KEN

Biography and Artist Statement.
“My work is inspired by African influences, the civil rights movement and of my personal visions. I place importance on craftsmanship, experiment with form, explore the surreal and create dynamic compositions by silk-screening large sheets of color and then invent the images as I cut and assemble them into large scale art works. Bold and colorful, they are derived from remembered experiences of growing up in rural Central Florida, the Florida’s Gulf Coast, and my life over the past 70 years.”

Over the course of his career in art and education, Ken has always emphasized the importance of craftsmanship and self-expression in his own work and the work of his students. As a result, he has developed his own visual vocabulary and an improvisational style of printmaking that he calls silkscreen construction collage.

In his technique, Ken silkscreens color inks onto large sheets of paper and invents images by cutting and assembling these color sheets into dynamic abstract compositions to form large scale art pieces.

Ken’s art work can be found in many public and private collections including the Museum of the National Center for Afro-American Artists, Boston, Daytona News Journal, NCCU Art Museum, Florida A&M University, Metro-Dade County Building of Public Administration, Atlanta Life Insurance Company, St. Louis Artists Guild, and the Wisconsin Union Art Collection.

Ken retired from teaching in 2011 and can be found spending his time continuing to create new works of art, exhibiting, traveling and spending time with his family.

Ken Falana is contemporary printmaker and retired art educator born and raised in Florida who began drawing in the 1950’s as a child. He fondly remembers an aunt and uncle with whom he sometimes lived taking him to the Ringling Museum in Sarasota, Florida. Once there, he became enamored with classical and Renaissance nude sculpture in exhibits and began drawing them. Although his aunt and uncle where initially taken aback by his new found obsession of drawing nude figures, they encouraged him to continue drawing.

Ken describes himself as a colorist whose strongest inspiration for his images and color are based on remembered experiences of growing up in rural Central Florida and the Gulf Coast. His works of art span over 60 years, from early works that include a series of silkscreen and collage prints that commented on the Civil Rights movement of the sixties to realistic graphite drawings. Later, Ken began combining silkscreen printing(Serigraphy) with collage and experimenting with monoprints to create boldly abstract and colorful collections of art pieces.