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

"Let There Be War"

Zoot Coffee

When I met Kenny Cole for the first time, I had been teaching too much and my own paintings were going badly. Not really an excuse but there is no telling what I will say out loud under those circumstances. Plus, Kenny bought me a chai. So there was caffeine.

“What do you want?” I asked him when we were both seated at Zoot, the busy, trendy coffeehouse in Camden, Maine. God bless him, he plunged right in. Mr. Cole wanted me to write about him.


Hmmm...over his shoulder I could see some of his paintings. Before he had arrived I had looked at the work up close, as artists do, checking out the surfaces, the brushwork, the materials involved. And, of course, the subject matter. In each painting, tiny or huge, airplanes screamed, flames erupted. Grimacing Santas inexplicably threatened to punch or be punched by hideously sinewed black humans while leprechauns looked on from the shrubbery. The colors bordered on garish. The gouache paint was laid on flat and the figures often outlined in the manner of comic book artists.


The exhibit, entitled “The Shroud Cycle: Let There Be War” was a ferocious portrait and critique of our rapacious society, with its wars and greed and racist caricatures. The painting, “The Last Drop of Water”, (62x46”), one attempt at a more painterly approach in acrylic on canvas, shows a gigantic blue drop of our most precious liquid as the focal point, while menacing soldiers push in from the shadows. That damned Santa and his African American adversary stare each other down on either side. Every character in the picture quite fittingly has blood on his hands, including the politicians grabbing at the contested water from the foreground.


“I hate it”, I told him.


Well, of course that brought us to Guston, who Cole “bows down before”. Guston, that pre-eminent creator of ugly narratives. Other loves? Goya, Ensor, Bosch, Spero. The influence of these artists, particularly Ensor’s palette and Bosch’s jostling squirmers are present in the huge, multi-panelled painting “Let There Be War II '' (88x112”). In every square inch of this monumental gouache painting on rice paper, golden-haired men wrestle and preen and wield clubs. Leprechauns leer and argue. And then, just when all hope seems lost, a group of beautifully delineated polar bears rises in the upper left, like a tall, cold drink sipped while riding on a sweaty subway car.


The engines propelling all of this artistic activity and Cole’s frenetic exhibiting schedule in Midcoast Maine are moral activism and the love of the act of painting. Cole has found a further source of inspiration in his Catholic history - the eponymous Shroud that is supposed to bear Christ’s sweaty imprint. After discovering the propensity of folded rice paper for creating compelling ink blots suggestive of the Shroud of Turin, he used these as a jumping off place to create the panoramic works on display at Zoot. (An interesting side discussion: why does symmetry seem ecclesiastical?)


Cole says this work suggests “the theatre of battle”. Indeed. Or as Robert Creeley once described Phillip Guston’s late work: “ a denseness of anxieties and sorrows, like a nightmare world of forms which are all exact and there.” I am hopeful that Kenny Cole will break free of the constraints of his current illustrative habits and plunge into paint up to his elbows. Lets see what you can really do, Mr. Cole.


Karen Jelenfy

November 2023

2023 "Let There Be War" essay by Karen Jelenfy