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BIOGRAPHY

Kenneth Houghton Ober was born in Cambridge, Mass. on February 22, 1972 to parents who were attending local colleges.  Several months later, after graduating, his parents moved to rural Maryland to settle.  Kenneth’s creative abilities surfaced in elementary school and had become his focus by high school.  The guidance of an excellent teacher pushed him to explore diverse media and ideas as well as instilling an idea of how to encourage the imagination.

In 1990 Kenneth entered the University of Maryland at College Park with Fine Arts as his major.  His diverse studies in Art History opened doors into the worlds of religion and Asian culture, which introduced Buddhist philosophy and practice.  These influences steered Kenneth’s work away from traditional Western styles to a more meditative and intuitive way of creation.  Kenneth participated in several group shows and created his first installations during this time.

Kenneth withdrew from Maryland in 1993 and began working independently.  A year of study and practice led him to Naropa University in Boulder, CO.  Naropa is the only liberal arts college founded on Buddhist philosophy in the United States.  For over a year Kenneth immersed himself in the teachings and practices espoused by the school.  Artwork from this period was exhibited at Eclectic Art Gallery in Denver and at Naropa in Boulder.

The impending birth of his daughter and the desire to connect with a larger art world led Kenneth to Chicago in 1995.  Discoveries of C. G. Jung’s research with mandalas and the intensity of an urban environment led Kenneth’s work in an entirely new direction.  Text became an important element used to create images by weaving layers together.  Several exhibitions and a variable ongoing public installation served as outlets for his visual research.

Kenneth moved to California in 1999 looking for a place to settle and live as an artist.  He graduated from Otis College of Art and Design in 2001, where he had been focusing on painting and installation in relationship to traditional and contemporary African aesthetics.  His work had taken on the characteristics of multicultural magical devices that appear as if they should be part of an esoteric ritual event.  He utilized text from English, Sanskrit, Arabic, and Chinese in conjunction with divination systems and magical diagrams from around the world.  These paintings are a visual presentation of the complex multicultural fusion that defines contemporary human culture.

Kenneth’s current paintings are about exploring and defining time and space through abstract visual means by using simple notations.   These paintings are complex meditative fields created through the excessive repetition of simple, small lines that individually reflect every moment in the history of the paintings.  This meditative process creates multiple layers of marks, which interact in different ways to create a variety of visual experiences.  These paintings are made primarily with a tool designed for pin-striping automobiles, which is used to apply paint to smooth or subtly textured canvas.  This tool is used for relentlessly consistent mark making that appears as a kind of “micro-impressionist” technique.  This technique also creates the experience of optical color mixing.   The colors are not only mixed on the canvas but they also mix together in the eye of the beholder creating additional color perceptions.  The simple individual marks interact and work together to create the complex visual experience of these paintings.

RESUME

1972               Born in Cambridge, Massachusetts

EDUCATION

2001              B.F.A., Painting, Otis College of Art & Design, Westchester, CA

1994-1995      The Naropa Institute, Boulder, CO

1990-1993      The University of MD, College Park, MD

SOLO EXHIBITIONS

2007                        Quantum Quandaries, The Jazz Bakery, Los Angeles, CA

2005                        Erasing Space, Dao, Los Angeles, CA

2002                        Recent Work, The Gallery, Los Angeles, CA

2001                       New Paintings, Paparazzi Gallery, Sherman Oaks, CA

Paintings, Flasher, Los Angeles, CA

2000                        Dragons, Flasher, Los Angeles, CA

Thread of Paint, Jaco, Los Angeles, CA

1999                        Monochrome Mandalas, Jaco, Los Angeles, CA

New Paintings, Garden of Childhood, Malibu, CA

1998                        Hexibition, Xoinx Gallery, Chicago, IL

1997                        Webs that Words Weave, Urbis Orbis Arts, Chicago, IL

1996                        New Work, Xoinx Gallery, Chicago, IL

1995                        Tapping the Psychosphere, Naropa University, Boulder, CO

1993                        Installation, Planet X Art Space, College Park, MD

GROUP EXHIBITIONS

2009                        Rogue Wave, Anderson Art Collective, Carpinteria, CA

2008                        In The Abstract, LAX Terminal One, Los Angeles, CA

Inglewood Open Studios, Inglewood, CA

Reclaiming: Inter-generation, 627 Carondelet, Los Angeles, CA

2008 Juried All Media, Palos Verdes Art Center,

Rancho Palos Verdes, CA

Wet Paint benefiting LACMA Arts Council, Beverly Hills, CA

2007                        2007 Juried All Media, Palos Verdes Art Center, Rancho Palos Verdes, CA

Inglewood Open Sudios, Inglewood, CA

2006                        Wet Paint benefiting LACMA Arts Council, Beverly Hills, CA

2004                      New Paintings, Dao, Los Angeles, CA

2003                        Reclaiming, 627 Carondelet, Los Angeles, CA

$200, Andrew Shire Gallery, Los Angeles, CA

Art for Play, Venice, CA

The Miscellaneous, Orbetello Gallery, Los Angeles, CA

2002                        Urban Tents and Pods, Orbetello Gallery, Los Angeles, CA

2001            Undergraduate Show, Otis College of Art & Design, Westchester, CA

Gibton, Bolsky Gallery, Westchester, CA

Auditorium, Bliss Gallery, Pasedena, CA

2000                        Fiori, Santa Monica, CA

2000                       Through our Eyes, Bolsky Gallery, Westchester, CA

1999                        Bolsky Gallery, Westchester, CA

1996                        Good’s of Evanston, Evanston, IL

1995                        Eclectic Art, Denver, CO

1994                        Naropa University  Boulder, CO

1993                        West Gallery  College Park, MD

1992                        West Gallery  College Park, MD

1990                        Maryland State Art Competition  Towson, MD

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Barnard, Sarah, “Thinking Green” LA Design, Fall 2008.

Stephens, Craig, “Urban Tents and Pods,” ArtScene, December 2002

SELECTED COLLECTIONS

Maril Blanchard & Beau Lippman, Gold River, CA

Lilly & Allen Schweitzer, Los Angeles, CA

Eva Edwards, Sterling, VA

Janet Siderman, Malibu, CA

Marianne & Cormac Wibberley, Hermosa Beach, CA

Terry & Stafford Taylor, Malibu, CA

Alexis Smith & Scott Grieger, Venice, CA

Ysamur Flores Pena, Ph.D., Los Angeles, CA

Billy Mendibles, Santa Barbara, CA

Mary Ta, Los Angeles, CA

Eva Roberts, Mar Vista, CA

Shalom Amar, Sherman Oaks, CA

Sunny & Chris Mellet, Denver, CO

Kat & Corey Hartman, Denver, CO

Mr. Imagination, Chicago, IL

Jim Tullio, Chicago, IL

Nathalie Scheinbein, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Anne & Barry Hamilton, Lutherville, MD

Picture Woods Ltd., Boulder, CO

Georgetown Station, Washington, DC

AWARDS

William Randolph Hearst Scholarship, The Hearst Foundation