We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Ken Cosentino. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Ken below.
Ken, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Can you tell us about a time that your work has been misunderstood? Why do you think it happened and did any interesting insights emerge from the experience?
Yes, my entire life is misunderstood by the general public and it’s by twofold design. The first and most important is that I control my public image. I am not interested in fame; if it happens, I will continue to broadcast the same collective persona because I am not a fake person. I am a real human being with a life full of ups and downs, and I cherish my privacy like everyone else. Every face that I show to the public is a real part of who I am, but ultimately very few people truly understand me because only a few people will ever truly know me.
My persona on social media or in public appearances determines how I am perceived by those who I’ve never met. I do not strive to be liked, but to be heard. I believe that I am here to protect those who need protection; women, children, elders and those who are too weak to protect themselves. If that offends people, then so be it.
The second half of the twofold design is how I have been perceived by shadow campaigns through political propaganda. As an artist, I decided to use my voice to speak out against corruption in my hometown and my career definitely paid the price for my activism. I have nothing to hide, I bare my soul to the world. So those who want to suppress my voice rely on calling me crazy, hoping to discredit the messenger and distract from the message.
They don’t realize that all real artists are crazy by nature.
Ken, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
Today I am better known in my hometown for my investigative journalism and political activism than I am for my artwork. This has been a major struggle that I no longer wish to endure. I am an artist first, but no good deeds go unpunished and I have kicked some major hornet nests in several David versus Goliath skirmishes with corrupt government and their billionaire benefactors.
To me, it’s a shame that I am seen for this work instead of my extensive catalog. So let me tell you about it a little bit and anyone can find more by Googling my name.
In 2022, in the blazing sun I painted a forty foot by ten foot mural in the city market in my hometown Niagara Falls, NY. There is a large blank space in the middle of the mural to be used as a projection screen for movie screenings. This is a part of the coming expansion of one of our oldest and most beloved local restaurants, Marketside: Home of the best breakfast in town. The owners Mike and Tony Poletti fed me hearty meals every day before work. They changed my diet in the best of ways.
I painted a dreamlike vision of red theater curtains being opened by stone angels in an Italian Renaissance theme. The mural says “Marketside Theater” and “Enjoy the show!” and the upper corners are guarded by the sculpture-like heads of Poseidon and Zeus. I painted all of this with Iwata airbrushes which glide like a dream, proving the superior precision of high performance Japanese airbrush technology. I used automotive paint because our winters can be very harsh and I want this mural to last as long as the building it’s painted on. Automotive paint is the most difficult of all paints to blow through an airbrush because it thickens quickly and it’s really yucky stuff. However, due to the many hours I put into my mural I felt that I had mastered the mixing and execution of the paints while I was working with them.
My back was completely wrecked and I kept reminding myself of a letter that the Great Michelangelo wrote to his friend Giovanni Da Pistoia in 1509. I won’t quote the entire letter here but I highly recommend that you read it, it’s not long but I wish it was! Michelangelo describes the pain and torture he endured while painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. He ends his letter with, “Because I’m stuck like this, my thoughts are crazy, perfidious tripe: anyone shoots badly through a crooked blowpipe. My painting is dead. Defend it for me, Giovanni, protect my honor. I am not in the right place—I am not a painter.”
Michelangelo’s words stay withed me while I endured the mural, often wondering “What have I gotten myself into?” On one occasion, I was standing atop a 14 foot ladder painting Zeus’s head during a vicious windstorm. The open market acts like a vacuum creating a vortex and the suction forced me to pin my body against the wall and huddle over the airbrush to protect the air from the nozzle to the wall. Ultimately, I was forced to redo that portion of the mural the next day because some mistakes were uncontrollable.
During my worst days, when it seemed that all hope was lost, I would say “I’m not a painter, Giovanni! Defend me!” This is true. I am not a painter. I thought about how Michelangelo used the buon fresco technique of blending the paint with wet plaster; the most difficult of all painting techniques to some. Michelangelo was not a painter, and Donato Bramante was hoping he would fail when he recommended his brush to Pope Julius II. Instead of embarrassing himself, Michelangelo rose to the occasion and created an absolute masterpiece.
I am not comparing myself to Michelangelo or my mural to the Sistine Chapel, but for me that’s how it felt. At one point, a wooden scaffolding collapsed and crushed me into the ground, and when I got up I just continued painting because I was running out of time. The temperature dropped and I had to call it quits. I won’t be painting another mural for a long, long time but I am proud of my creation.
I have dabbled in whatever medium interests me, including politics. I am an illustrator, sketch artist, airbrush artist, screenwriter, author, special-effects artist, director, producer, actor, stunt man, and puppet maker… but I am NOT a painter!
When I was a kid I won a few big art competitions sponsored by Roswell Park Cancer Center. One of my drawings was displayed at the Albright Knox Museum in Buffalo, NY. I started making home movies with my brothers when I was about 9 years old, really focusing on it when I turned 11. When I was 13 I started teaching myself special-effects makeup. At 15 I met my first mentor, a robotics expert and one time Disney producer named Fred Calandrelli. When I was 18 I made my first feature film, “Break the Sky” which played in a packed Laemmle Theatre on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood. That same year I also met my second mentor, airbrush artist Vincent Pagano, who taught me how to airbrush and who I worked under for several years. I will never be as skilled at airbrushing as Vince or as technically brilliant as Fred. Both men are masters of their crafts to whom I owe a debt of gratitude.
I love Walt Disney, Jim Henson and Stan Winston. I am also inspired by my friend Steve Wang, the legendary creature creator and grandmaster.
I have written, shot, directed and edited five feature films – and I’ve produced seven. I have many more scripts written that I am currently shopping around. Right now I am focusing on my family and my writing, though I do plan on directing my next feature in 2026. My work typically involves stop-motion animation and advanced puppetry. I love collaborating with other artists and the reason I told you the story of the mural is to tell you what I learned from the experience: Artists are born with artistic talent, just like athletes are born with athletic talent. Artists must push ourselves beyond our perceived limits to discover deeper aspects of our souls.
I also wrote a book called “Secret Teachings of the Hidden Masters” which was in the top 25 of both its genres on Amazon for 18 months.
Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?
Yes. In 2013 I was 23 years old and I had to endure a horrific film shoot in Pensacola, FL where I was working as the First Assistant Director on a movie called “Atlantic Rim”. When I came back home, I was pulled into another production as an on-set producer, but after a few weeks the cast and crew staged a full-fledged mutiny. As the person with the most experience, I was asked to direct the movie. I didn’t want to and I probably should have just said no, but I thought about how the film would collapse and so I said yes.
You can imagine how upset the original director (who also wrote the original script) was with me. That was Hell. We sold that movie to Troma Entertainment for a song and a dance. Horrible experience.
I had to rid myself of the disgusting residue from both of these shoots and being young and spry, I directed two more feature films in 2014. In 2015, while all three features were being edited, my oldest brother killed himself.
At that time I was totally focused on launching a web series and we had produced two episodes out of five. They were not edited, and I still had to edit two of the feature films. I had an obligation to those two movies and unfortunately I had to put the web series on the back burner, until eventually it became impossible to finish due to cast moving or passing away.
Yet still, I had to soldier on and edit two feature films with no editing team while grieving for the sudden tragic loss of my brother. If that isn’t resilience, then I don’t know what is. These “no budget” films were released at the end of 2016 in all major stores including Walmart, on National Primetime TV and in select theaters. I also authored one of the DVD’s which was a huge bitch.
What can society do to ensure an environment that’s helpful to artists and creatives?
Look, AI is here and most people are totally unprepared for what is to come. It’s already difficult being an artist, but how am I supposed to impress the common person when they can snap their fingers and create something that’s probably better than what I made?
Still, there is blood, sweat and tears in what we do. Within those three ingredients is the secret to how art has and will always prevail.
It would be great if we had benevolent benefactors such as the Medici family to bankroll serious professionals so that we can create real Earth-shaking masterpieces. The unfortunate reality is that most professional artists work in either marketing/advertising or propaganda. Very few are unleashed with the proper resources to create unfettered. I definitely haven’t ever had the opportunity to fully show the world what I am capable of, and I know that’s a reality for millions of other artists.
Insufficient resources does lead to innovation which has produced some of the best art in virtually every medium. However, being a starving artist loses its flavor after a while. I am at the point now where I make art for myself and if anyone else wants to hire me, they have to pay me what I’m worth; especially as a writer!
Artists wield the power to envision the future however we wish to see it. Using our imagination, we can create whatever we want. This makes us dangerous to the status quo and those who wish to remain in power of unjust systems of control and deception. Artists will always break through those types of systems and I believe that there has been a gradual suppression of artists… at least in the United States. By devaluing real artists, they are forced into the stables of advertising. I’ve worked on many studio and television productions that were not focused on creating art. I’ve seen directors who were not artists but the studio hired them to complete the movie as dictated by the suits.
This gradually erasure has led to the AI art phenomenon but I believe the pendulum will soon swing back. I hope that people will support independent artists like myself because we have families to feed. I’ll never give up “being” an artist because I “am” an artist, and it’s really all that I know.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.kencosentino.com
- Instagram: @KenCosentino
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ken.cosentino.2024
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ken-cosentino-6836b823/
