Ken Rasmussen is passionate about how places create meaning in people's lives.
He draws from his own travels with family to create oil paintings of places that are close to his heart.
In Ken's art you'll find holiday stories, the drama of the big city as well as the sacred peaceful places we retreat to.
Ken's oil paintings are a window to the memories and experiences that light up our lives and connect us to the people we love most.
Biography
Ken Rasmussen grew up in Broome, Marble Bar and other Western Australian country towns.
He was educated at Scotch College, and attended the University of Western Australia (B.A Literature and one year at Law School.) He subsequently completed a Bachelor of Arts in Fine Arts at West Australian Institute of Technology (now Curtin University), majoring in painting.
Since graduation Ken has painted professionally, gaining a reputation for realist drawing, watercolour and oil painting skills.
More recently Ken has evolved as a modern realist impressionist painter.
Read Ken's blog for further information about his style and influences.
Tim Winton Opening Speech
Tim Winton opened Ken's "Summer Breezes" exhibition. Here are some extracts from his speech in reference to Ken and his work.
“... Impervious to trends, a resister of cliches, he tends to his own personal vision with a resolute intensity that marks him out as stubbornly individual... This is a man who cares about places. Here is an artist who believes in craft. This is an artist who gives respect to the viewer. There's no posturing here, no hostile puzzles, no cynical narcissism. What I particularly love about these paintings is their meditative calm. Looking at a dragonfly on a lily pad, a light-softened bend of the Margaret River, fiery rows of grapevines or the dreamy haze of mudflats, you have the sense of being a lone observer. It's like the sacred sense you have of being the first awake or the last asleep. You prowl alone through the house in the quiet and stand on the veranda and see the strange freshness of the world.
Familiar, but freshly made, as if for you. There is a kind of longing in the works ... that comes from this calm solitude, this feeling of sweet loneliness. The Germans have a word for it: sehnsucht. A mixture of longing, melancholy, awe, and joy. A kind of sacred feeling...
Go back to the dragon fly on the lilypad and all the patient renderings of light... The dawn light on Rottnest ochre walls. These are things you want to see again, images that would do honour to your home and workplace. Why? Because, with time and craft and sheer doggedness, someone has rendered to things their due esteem..."