 Ken Musselman |
About This Season’s Cover Each year at Norfolk, we look to our friends and neighbors to provide the visual representation of the year’s offerings. Local artist Ken Musselman created Sunday Afternoon in Norfolk, inspired by Georges-Pierre Seurat’s pointillism. His work has been shown in galleries across the country and we couldn’t be happier with his contribution to Music Among Friends. Read below about Mr. Musselman and his wonderful Sunday Afternoon in Norfolk.  Sunday Afternoon in Norfolk by Ken Musselman Inspiration My inspiration for painting Sunday Afternoon in Norfolk was basically a theme set by the Norfolk Artisans Guild. It was an open entry to all area artists to come up with essentially anything related to frogs. So I took on the challenge. The creative process before any painting is the best part. I was thinking about how I could merge the town of Norfolk in with the frog theme. In what style: impressionism, pop art, then it hit me…Seurat! I’ve always been inspired by pointillism. A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte would be the subject matter. Then the ideas began to flow. It had to relate to Norfolk somehow.…It had to be whimsical and have a folksy kind of art look to it. The Music Shed was subtle enough to have the identity it needed. So I replaced the original lake with the Shed and a water stream, of course, adding the bridge, the season was right, keeping in mind the Yale summer concerts, and by picking out prominent subjects in the painting, and replacing them with frogs, it just all came together. I especially liked including the “Chamber Playing Frogs.” The dog in the original Seurat had to be replaced with my own dog, a miniature schnauzer, kind of a tribute to him. Norfolk has always been a quaint little town. The Yale Summer School of Music is the main icon for the season; it was just a good fit. I had a lot of fun creating this painting. There were several other spin-offs created from the original. This one was the best. I am always up for creative challenges. Ken Musselman Biography A primarily self-taught artist, Ken attended the Cooper School of Art in Cleveland, Ohio, where he was born and raised. Upon his high school graduation he followed his father’s advice to “take up a trade” and joined the U.S. Navy to train as a structural mechanic. While attending technical training in Memphis, Tennessee, Ken’s talent could not be subdued, and he found an outlet in painting murals on the walls of the base’s dining and entertainment facilities. His superiors soon observed that he could better serve the Navy as an illustrator-draftsman, and Ken’s career as a mechanic came to an end. Since then Ken has had the proverbial starving artist’s resume, plowing through the gamut of labor to “keep the lights on.” However, on nearly every occasion his art shines through. Such was the case when he became a doorman for the Walt Disney Resorts, where he was involved with advertising layouts for the Epcot Flower & Garden Festivals and illustrated a property map for the Disney Yacht and Beach Club Resorts. Over the course of 30 years, Ken has displayed his award-winning work in a number of private and public schools in Cleveland, Ohio, Jacksonville and Orlando, Florida, as well as here in Connecticut. Ken currently resides in Litchfield County with his wife, Cathy. They have one son, Wesley, who recently graduated from the United States Naval Academy as an Ensign and is currently attending flight school in Pensacola, Florida. To view Ken Musselman’s gallery, visit www.kenmusselman.com. |
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