Artist Statement:
To me art is a very personal thing. It’s all about visual communication between the artist and the viewer. If a piece of art moves you and speaks to you it is a great painting no matter the medium or style. If it makes you want to take it into your life and live with it It is a Great painting.
Biography:
Ken Grant has lived in Oregon all his life, born in Klamath Falls in 1938. He grew up in Portland, and from 1956 to 1962 studied at the Advertising Art School ( where during his last three years taught drawing and anatomy). From 1969 to 1970 he further honed his skills in drawing and sculpture at the Museum Art School (now Pacific Northwest College of Art).
In 1958 he began a long career in retail store window and interior display, first for Bedell’s Department Store until 1964, then for Nordstrom where he was Director of Display and Interior Design of the three Portland area stores. Leaving Nordstrom in 1967 he began a successful business as a freelance display artist and retail store designer. From 1968 to 1970 he also taught visual merchandising at the Bassist Fashion Institute.
During the summer of 1960 he and a friend from art school opened an art gallery in Cannon Beach, Oregon. Having fallen in love with the Oregon coast, in 1972 he moved with his wife and two sons back to Cannon Beach to spend more time on his art and built a permanent home and studio there. As this small town was now becoming known as an artist enclave, Grant’s drawings and sculpture were being exhibited in several galleries in Cannon Beach and Portland.
In 1975 he and several other local artists founded the Winter Gallery in Portland to have an outlet for their work in the coast’s off season. In 1976, one of his drawings “Life Size Self Portrait Paper Doll” was the feature piece in the “Works on Paper” exhibit at the Portland Art Museum and in 1982 a book of his drawings, “The Nude” was published.
Along the way he has done numerous Illustrations for books, magazines, greeting cards and advertisements. In 1982 he moved to Milwaulkie, Oregon in the Portland area, where he increasingly concentrated on painting. By 1994 he had become an artist full time.
