Articles and Reviews
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2023 "Let There Be War" essay by Karen Jelenfy

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2022 "Kenny Cole’s Savage Menagerie" The Free Press (Vol. 38 No. 41 P. 12) HiLo Art review by Alan Crichton

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2021 "Santa's Hands and Uncle Sams" The Free Press (Vol. 37 No. 47 P.1 & 6) review by Ethan Andrews

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2018 "Indigestion" Portland Press Herald review by Dan Kany

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2017 "Lines of Thought" Portland Press Herald review by Dan Kany

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2016 "The Promise of Tomorrow" Republican Journal review by Ethan Andrews

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2016 "Like There's No Tomorrow" and "The Promise of Tomorrow" Pen Bay Pilot review by Kay Stephens

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2015 "Flood" Seasick Magazine / Hurricane season issue review by Narciso Philistratus

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2014 Artvoices Magazine 7th Annual Winter Basel Issue interview by Ellen Caldwelll

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2014 "Parabellum" Portland Press Herald review by Dan Kany

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2014 "Parabellum" Art New England review by Carl Little

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2014 "Parabellum" Portland Press Herald review by Bob Keyes

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2014 "Parabellum" Artscope review by Suzanne Volmer

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2013 "Distress" interview by Lisa Agostini

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2012 "CMCA Biennial Exhibition" Artscope review by Suzanne Volmer

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2012 "As High As Heaven" catalogue essay by Freddy LaFage and Karen McDonald

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2011 "Gold, God, Guns and Girls" catalogue essay by Nicholas Schroeder

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2010 "The Hellfire Story" Portland Phoenix review by Nicholas Schroeder

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2010 "The Hellfire Story" catalog essay by Al Crichton

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1997 "Cole’s work is neither carefree nor innocent" The Waldo Independent hi-lo review by Alan Crichton

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1995 “The Road to Hell is Paved with Good Intentions” The Waldo Independent hi-lo art review by Alan Crichton

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1990 "Paintings of Eros" New York Times review by William Zimmer

Books and Catalogues
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2022 "Low Energy: Strata Works 1992-2022"

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2021 "Jacked" supplemental image catalog to exhibition

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2021 "Tumult" Image catalog of new work on Xuan paper

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2021 "The 5 Stages of Grief" Handmade chapbook from Staring Problem Press (Out of Print...but contact me if you would like a copy!)

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2020 "W.T.H.J.H.?" image catalogue with essay

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2013 "Distress" image catalog with interview

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2012 "As High As Heaven" image catalogue with essay

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2011 "Darfur at Our Doorstep" image catalog

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2011 "Gold, God, Guns and Girls" image catalogue with essay

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2010 "The Hellfire Story" image catalogue with essay

Selected Website Listings
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Fall 2021 Maine Arts Journal: UMVA Quarterly partnering with the statewide initiative Freedom & Captivity. I contributed an essay and images

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2019 Interview/blog post with "Gallery Closed" artists, Kenny Cole, Geoff Hargadon, Paula Lalala and Brian Reeves

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2016 "The Promise of Tomorrow" Republican Journal review by Ethan Andrews

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2015 "Flood" The Chart review by Jeffrey Ackerman

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2014 "Monhegan: The Unfailing Muse" review by Britta Konau

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2014 "Parabellum" Portland Press Herald review by Dan Kany

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2014 "Parabellum" Portland Press Herald review by Bob Keyes with video

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2009 Thoughts by "The Owl Who Laughs" Poet Chris Crittenden's blog

Penobscot Bay Pilot


Artist Kenny Cole examines American politics, men and the uniform through his art





By Kay Stephens


Friday, November 11, 2016





BELFAST—While some people may be exhausted with political topics this week, it is a continuing conversation through Kenny Cole’s art. A Maine visual artist, Cole’s work has been described as a visionary mix with an activist inspired political thrust.


With a show called "Like There's No Tomorrow" solo currently hanging at Win Wilder Hall in Rockland and another, “The Promise of Tomorrow,” on view at Chase’s Daily Perimeter Gallery through December 31, Cole has tried to make sense of a turbulent political climate and what it means to be an American man.


Cole grew up in Poughkeepsie, New York, and attended Pratt Institute in Brooklyn in 1976 studying “a reductionist’s approach to painting, with a consciousness toward the painting object’s physical relationship to the maker/viewer and the physicality of mark-making.”


After moving to Maine in 1994 with his wife and two children, he soon began getting involved with organizing several political art actions.


In 2002, he met the political artist Luis Camnitzer, who had a strong influence on him. Cole states: “I decided to commit myself more fully to creating politically engaging art. I have since then begun to re-visit making more elaborate two-sided interactive painting structures and have become even more determined to expansively explore the allure of the military economy.”


Technology plays heavily into his artwork. Having grown up on the tail end of the Baby Boomer generation, he said, “I often examine our relationship with technology and how through our infatuation with it, we sell our souls a little bit.”


Santa Claus and leprechauns appear in several of his paintings in gouache.


“I like to take popular symbolic characters and imagine how they might relate to warfare,” he said. "As an artist, I'm interested in schematic colors, pageantry and national colors, how they appear on flags, and redefining what they mean."


In “Four Uniforms” he copied an illustration of winter and summer Air Force uniforms from a 1960 encyclopedia, rendering the Santas cheering on the winter side and the Leprauchans cheering on the summer side. All of the flying insignias in the painting also came from that Encyclopedia page.


In the painting “Three coffins flag,” he said: “While the shape of the flag is familiar, the colors are not and your brain is trying to make connections with national colors. You want to understand what that means.”


“Man Carrying A Cross” at first glance doesn’t make sense until you realize that each truncated Google link refers to an online image of modern day men carrying crosses down a road.


“I first saw this in Belfast, twice actually over the last two years, men carrying a giant cross down the road,” he said. “And if you Google this image, you’ll find thousands of people do this. I was going to do hyper realistic paintings of these photos, but I decided to create the shorthand for these photos, so that you would have to disengage with the art and consult your handheld device.”


Asked why he chose to engage with this subject, he said: “It’s just this weird phenomenon of white men carrying a cross for miles and miles all geared up with compartments in the cross where they carry all of their clothes as sort of this self-flagellating quest. What they are telling the world by doing this is that they are suffering, and I think that’s what happened in this past election. Many people didn’t like Trump or what he had to say but then there was the other side, the working class white male who Trump identified with and listened to and that’s why Trump successfully won. We’ve now heard them loud and clear.”

2016 "Like There's No Tomorrow" and "The Promise of Tomorrow" Pen Bay Pilot review by Kay Stephens