Ken Gailer

Ken Gailer

Australian

“One's inner-creative is often an exercise in the unknown and unusual.”

Completing his studies in Sydney in 1971, Ken’s artistic style has always depicted a magnetic and opposing tension and reckoning with the traditions of realism and that of abstraction. Honored with his first Australian art award in 1978, Ken has collected numerous accolades in his painting career.

Ken’s early works paid homage to the Renaissance masters of the portrait, and a creative clash of history and the contemporary appeared on every canvas. His more recent collections have collaged an expression of intensity of such opposing forces, whether the subject matter is tradition, spirituality, material or landscape.  Ken usually defines this method of montage as conflicts where new ideas emerge from the collision of images and he always find it fascinating to see what will happen. “I attempt to handle these conflicting languages of painting with equal potency to create post-modern montages rich with possibilities.”

A love for pop art has had a strong influence on Ken’s series Visual Discourse. “I’ve always been interested in pop artists – the way you can place disparate objects against things and make a whole, is very interesting,” he says. Ken likes to create images with abstraction and patterning and does not want his works to have explained narratives. He would prefer his audience to find things in the work so they can create their own narratives. The text is there to open up the narrative possibilities. Sensuousness in color and richness in imagery permeate all of Ken’s canvases.

“In the end a painting is not only what is depicted within the work, but a physical thing made of paint and canvas. But it is also physical evidence of the creative process of the human mind.”   

Ken has held more than 30 solo shows and group exhibitions since 1980 globally and his works form parts of corporate and private collections in Australia, England, USA and Singapore. Ken currently lives and works in Queensland, Australia.