Ken Pattern

There is an artist here in Jakarta who is a transplant from Canada, his name Ken Pattern. His medium is mainly stone lithographs, but he also does oils, acrylics, etchings and ink drawings. We have seen a lot of his works in various places like businesses and friends houses. We went to our first showing in early 2007 at the Gran Melia Jakarta. We were not in a position to buy any of his art work but we were able to get some calendars for our friends back home. Each summer Ken returns to his shop in Canada to produce new pieces and each fall upon his return he has an exhibition. When he returned last year it was at the Hadiprana Gallery. At this exhibit we purchased our first two litho’s. We got “Cow” for Shannon’s mom and we bought “Family Outing” for ourselves. We saw some great oils and acrylics, but the prices were way out of our range.

Last week we went to the grand opening of his current exhibition at the Gran Melia and as fate would have it we found a picture that said “buy me”. Talk about a statement… this picture really does speak a thousand words. It transcends all cultural barriers and really hit me close to home. As most of our dearest friends know, Shannon and I are some what of naturalists. When I lived in Washington State, I use to go hiking and mountain biking off the fire roads in the mountains. It was so picturesque driving to the parking area, all the tall green trees; they seemed to go on forever…until I got on the fire roads. It’s not until you get onto the fire road and away from the main road that you see the true forest, the partially burnt stumps and rotting remains of what once use to be a forest. This is happening to forests all across this great world of ours. The painting that we bought shows a kind of surreal image of what I might see if I were to drive down the road where the forest once stood.

I hope everyone enjoys the picture.

"Habitat"