Ken Falana

Since the early 1970s, my work has involved the creation of prints, drawings, mix-medias, and collages conceptually based on the artistic inspiration of Africa, the civil rights movement and of personal visions. In 1992, I placed importance on craftsmanship, experimented with form, explored the surreal, and began creating dynamic compositions by silk-screening large sheets of color and then invented images as I cut and assembled. I am delving into the essence of an in improvisational style that is spiritually alive, abstract in form and gives a new meaning to expression. The challenge here is to produce something significantly different from anything that I had done before by creating bold and colorful abstract silkscreen collages that suggest natural forms and initiates a passage from nature to abstraction."You and I," and "Flowering Tree" are good representatives of the abstract silkscreen collages.

These collages represent one of the latest evolutions of a collage technique I learned years ago as a student at Florida A & M University. They are bold and colorful, and are derived from remembered experiences of growing up in rural Central Florida, the Florida's Gulf Coast, and the senses of life over the past 60 years. In them...

University of Wisconsin Madison
Madison, WI
Master of Fine Arts, 1972
Florida A&M University
Tallahassee, FL
Bachelors of Science Art Education, 1964

Gibbs Junior College
St Petersburg, FL
Associates of Art, 1961

2016
28th Art In Gadsen
Regional Exhibition of Fine Art
Gadsen Arts Center & Museum
Quincy, FL

2016
19th Annual Postcard Show", Quinlan Visual Arts Center, Gainsville, GA

2016
Aloft Hotel, Tallahassee, FL

2015
"LeMoyne Holiday Show", LeMoyne Center for the Visual Arts, Tallahassee, FL

2015
"27th Art in Gadsen: Regional Exhibition of Fine Art,
Gadsen Art Center", Quincy, FL

2015
"Garden of Earthly Delights", Florida Craft Art Gallery, St. Petersburg, FL

2014
"A Colorful Sense of Place", LeMoyne Center for the Visual Arts, Tallahassee, Florida

2012
“Ken Falana: Retrospective 2012″
Dr. Carter G. Woodson African-American Museum, St. Petersburg, Florida

2010
“Florida Journeys: African American Artists from the Sunshine State”
Appleton Museum of Art, Central Florida Community College, Ocala, Florida

2009
Ken Falana “An Explosion of Color”, Brick City Center for the Arts, Ocala, Florida

2003
"In Print: The Language of Art", FSU Museum of fine art, Tallahassee, Florida

2001
"Kenneth Falana: A Retrospective", North Carolina Central University Art Museum, Durham, North Carolina "In Print: The Language of Art, FSU Museum of fine art, Tallahassee, Florida

2000
"Millennium Flashback", Harmo...