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21st Century Surrealism…
Where Beauty and The Uncanny Meet…
Art by Ken Anbender

 

If you haven’t yet lived with this type of art, I suggest that you give it a try. Expand your horizons it will.

Without attempting to do full justice to the art by categorizing it, these expressions of 21st Century Surrealism reflect the beauty often associated with art and integrates that with the extraordinary and uncanny sides of creativity – giving an otherworldly yet quite real presence of mysterious entities and places.

My Objective Is To:

  • Introduce a fresh awareness of our depths of perception
  • Reveal for a fresh view what we often take for granted and normally miss
  • Show more fully the depths of who we are and how we relate to Life
  • Recognize existing attitudes and couple them with the unfamiliar – calling for new ideas, thought and perceptions
  • Reveal the transcendent and extraordinary in the ordinary

There exist for human beings many different dimensions and scales of being: whether cosmic, microcosmic, dream-like or abstract. I like to think of my art images as photographs of these other worlds — places inaccessible to a camera yet fully available to imagination. Though imagination and openness, the uncanny can become both beautiful and oddly familiar.

My PhD. dissertation in Clinical Psychology assessed the evolving historical interpretations of dreams, creativity and mystical experience in the discipline of psychology and suggested an original direction for it to head next. In addition, my in-depth work with hundreds of thousands of people to make more available what human beings are capable of at their best has taken me to this creative time and place. I intend to express in my art the expansiveness that is both available and a joyous part of vibrant living. The 40-year journey of exploring art’s capacities to conjure in-depth insights and unearthly existences is for me a natural fit with calling on people to be more awake and aware.

My art training was essentially as an autodidact staying open and welcoming of discoveries that fit my aesthetic and perspective. I like it that way. I didn’t want technique or outside influences to predetermine the outcome. I sought to follow a pathway of remaining receptive while embracing a broad-minded approach to creativity and to see where that took me. The signposts along the way are gathered here in this website.

In each of the galleries, I have presented my more recent works first. The images then proceed backwards in time to show what led to the current expressions. I feel that each phase was appropriate in its time and still remains true to my original ideals. They hold up or they aren’t here.

Please be my guest and visit as often and as long as you like. There is much to absorb and enjoy here.

Different pieces may appeal to you and be resonant at different times as well as when you are in different moods. Choose something that instinctively appeals to you and possibly takes a “stretch” to fully appreciate. Welcome it into your life. Live with it.

I have plenty around to keep me provoked and inspired. And, there is a lot more creative expression likely to come.

Do you recognize any of my art as an otherworldly friend? Take a friend home and enjoy the relationship!

Ken Anbender

http://voyagemia.com/interview/art-life-ken-anbender/