About Ken Grimes

"Is a man a closed system or is something added that possibly might come from outside the solar system?" mused Ken Grimes, both verbally and in his paintings. For Ken Grimes, this question first manifested itself in the brain of the adolescent Grimes from a science-fiction B-picture which depicted an ever-growing, brain like, alien creature. It is what Grimes considered to be his first real exposure to alien intelligence and visions which continued through many media and styles. Born in New York City on July 16, 1947, a day that correlates-the artist is apt to point out-with what could be considered other significant celestial events, including the first A-bomb detonated in Los Alamos, New Mexico, in 1943 and the first moon landing in 1969. While still basically an infant, he had an unsettled home. His family moved from Manhattan to a suburb of Tampa, Florida, and back to New York City again before settling down, when Grimes was six years old, in Cheshire, Connecticut, where he still resides. Grimes's grandfather, a semiprofessional magician and inventor, imbued in him a deep impression of the mystic and paranormal in Grimes. The first confirmation of the paranormal for Grimes came by an extraordinary circumstance. He discovered that the same time he was working at a public lottery in Cheshire, another Ken Grimes, sixty-two years old and living in Cheshire, England, won the largest soccer pool in history. Grimes incorporated these into is paintings with what Ken refers to as the "Coincidence Board. Since the Cheshire, England/ Connecticut coincidence in 1971, Grimes's paintings have gone through a number of media and styles, but he has diligently maintained a theme of alien intervention, space signals, synchronicities, and government cover-ups. He paints only in black and white, which he maintains is the most direct way of showing the contrast between truth and deception. These bold white-on-black graphics have become more iconographs than pictures. Sometimes a written statement will take up most of the piece, as if to remind us of the painting's true purpose. "The sooner we start a pattern of global awareness and formulate a response to 'side affects,' the easier it will be to make the transition between a human-centered view and an alien perspective," Ken Grimes.