KEN PATTERN
”From Jakarta to Bali” At the West End Community Centre

“From Jakarta to Bali” is the title of the current exhibition at the West End Community Centre, on until November 17. It features the works of Ken Pattern, a frequent exhibitor at the community centre’s annual Art In The City show and sale.

Creating visual images has always been a part of Ken Pattern’s life. As a child, he loved to draw, and took art seriously throughout his school years. “In high school I majored in Art, Geography and Rock & Roll, not necessarily in that order!” Ken said.

Ken’s earliest influences were the works of Rene Magritte, a Belgian surrealist artist and the Dutch graphic artist, M.C. Escher. His early themes were surrealistic/satirical images of the conflict between humans and nature. Coming from a part of Canada where forestry is a major industry, much of the early work dealt with the subject. Eventually, he evolved into a landscape artist, both surreal and representational in style.

Ken also had a passion to see the world and he left Canada in the summer of 1963, planning to explore Europe for six months. Four years later he returned, having spent two years in Europe and two more in Africa and Asia.

In 1968, Ken enrolled at Vancouver Community College and later transferred to Simon Fraser University with the idea of finding a career. “I wasn't sure what that would be,” he said, “so I dabbled in a variety of courses, majoring in Sociology. Fortunately, the times allowed for a lot of exploration and eventually, I returned to what I loved to do the most - Art.”

Believing that the best way of learning something is through on-the-job training, he joined the Society Promoting Environmental Conservation (SPEC) in the early ‘70s, which was one of the first grassroots environmental groups in Canada. Ken’s job was to create posters, brochures, displays and a newspaper. “On a diet of mainly brown rice and with very little money, I was part of a passionate, idealistic group of people in similar circumstances, out to save the world,” Ken recalled.

**“Footprint” (***acrylic on canvass / 30 x 40 cm)*

After SPEC, Ken pursued a life as an artist in fits and starts, taking odd jobs when the money ran out, which it did quite often. Commercial art got him through some tight spots and in 1974 he was hired by the federal government as a graphic artist. Three years later, with some savings in the bank, he left the comfort of a bi-weekly pay cheque for the art wilderness and booked his first art exhibition one and half years down the road. After some more travel and a dedicated work schedule, he had enough paintings to mount his first exhibition in the fall of 1978, at the old Vancouver Public Library. With his savings almost gone, he, fortunately, sold enough in that show to get him to the next exhibition in the summer of 1979.

That same year, Ken learned a great deal by enrolling in a summer course on basic lithography, but knew he was only scratching the surface, so to speak. That led him to enrol at the Emily Carr College of Art and Design in September 1979, majoring in printmaking.

The cost of setting up a printmaking studio was prohibitive but fortunately, Vancouver is home to one of the best co-op printmaking studios in Canada, the Malaspina Printmakers Society. It became Ken’s printmaking home for 35 years and he was able to hone his skills in the art and craft of lithography. This allowed him to create limited edition prints that he could display through a network of galleries.

With his new printmaking skills, he signed a contract with a leading art publisher, Canadian Native Prints, and this opened up new markets for his work. In the early ‘80s Ken served on the boards of Malaspina and the Burnaby Art Gallery as well as becoming a founding member of the Northwest Print Council, a group of professional printmakers headquartered in Portland, Oregon.

In 1984, Van City Credit Union commissioned him to illustrate their 1985 wall calendar. The connections and exposure raised his profile and he no longer had to depend on odd jobs.

In 1985, Ken’s wife Helen Vanwel was hired as Director of a Canadian government-funded project at a university in Beijing, where the two of them lived for close to three years. “I didn’t achieve much artistically myself while in China” Ken said, “but I met some brilliant Chinese artists and printmakers. I organized an exchange exhibition in Beijing and Portland with printmakers from the Beijing Academy of Fine Arts and members of the Northwest Print Council, a first for both groups. I was also fortunate to have some amazing travel experiences in the region, including to remote areas.”

**“Rujak Ulek Kelapa Muda”** *(Ink / 20 x 20 cm)*

In 1989, the couple moved to Jakarta, Indonesia on another Canadian government contract for what they expected would be a one-year assignment. That one year turned into 30 before they permanently returned to Canada. With no access to printmaking facilities in Indonesia, Ken returned to painting and drawing and participated in exhibitions in Indonesia and elsewhere.

In 1990, Ken began to draw (with pen & ink) images of typical kampung street scenes of Jakarta neighbourhoods.The word kampung usually refers to a rural village, but in Indonesian cities it describes poorer or working class communities. Ken soon realized that much of what he was recording was literally disappearing before his eyes.

“My usual modus operandi was to go out and photograph scenes that interested me, as well as taking notes and making rough sketches,” Ken said. “It was sometimes many months between the time of first seeing a scene and getting down to actually drawing the image. On one of these occasions when I returned to the location to study it further, I found an empty space where some months before stood a thriving busy community. This prompted me to begin recording disappearing traditional scenes across the city. I was on a mission.”

**“Flora and Concrete”** *(Ink / 20 x 20 cm)*

Over the next six years, Ken drew almost a hundred images depicting every-day Jakarta life as well as those showing the dramatic changes taking place in this rapidly developing city. Many of those images juxtapose the old with the new and the rich with the poor, which he notes is the reality of Jakarta.”This subject matter may have little historical or architectural value,” according to Ken, “but portrays what I consider to be a social heritage.”

While living in Indonesia for 30 years, Ken returned to Canada almost every year for a few months to create limited edition lithographs at the Malaspina studio in Vancouver. In Jakarta he continued to portray environmental and social concerns in his paintings and drawings.

Helen and Ken returned to Vancouver in 2019, not long before COVID lock down. He reflects that his current interest is mostly something of a return to what inspired him back in the ‘70s; trees and themes of how humans interact with our precious planet.

“From Jakarta to Bali” is a collection of the images inspired by Ken’s years in Indonesia. Ken will be on hand at the community to discuss his work on Saturday, November 2 from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. If you’d like to arrange another time to meet with him at the exhibition, email him at kenpattern@gmail.com.

You’ll find his extensive portfolio on his website here.