Ken Woods is an artist/printmaker, particularly applying pochoir, screenprint and digital techniques to his work. He works from a studio at Keighley Creative and is also a founder member of Trapezium Arts , Kirkgate, Bradford – an accessible gallery space for local visual artists in the city centre, holding regular exhibitions of local artworks.
Ken originally graduated in colour chemistry and worked in the commercial print sector for 16 years before attending Bradford School of Art, where he studied for a degree in Fine Art.
He has said of his current work:
My work predominantly looks at the nature of, and our relationship with information. I use simple pattern, itself a form of information, as a basis for the work. These patterns based on a hexagonal grid, are then manipulated in ways that parallel the nature of information and/or our relationship with it. In choosing simple patterns as the basis for the work, my intention is to avoid references to specific information and in so doing open up the work allowing the viewer to contemplate information both conceptually and in ways personal to themselves.
The process of creating and finding complex images, despite the simplicity of the underlying form, is central to my studio practice. Predominantly my work is developed in three stages – firstly, the basic form of the pattern/image is created digitally, then randomly generated colour variants (via computer code) are produced. From these I then select images that are both consistent with my theme and are also aesthetically interesting.
‘Wave’.
Ken won the 2nd prize in the Bradford Open 2015 and his work was exhibited at the Trapezium Gallery in 2018 in the 2018 group ‘Are You Informed’ exhibition. In 2022 he was also one of the 13 Keighley Creative resident artists featured in the ‘Following the Threads: Industry and Our Environment’ exhibition at the Bradford Industrial Museum.
Artist Contact: Ken Woods Art
‘Hydropower’
(With thanks to Ken Wood for permission to use the images shown above.)