Sculptor Kenneth Patrick Payne was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. After attending seven different colleges and universities, he received his MFA from the University of Wisconsin. He began teaching at Buffalo State College in 1990.
Payne has lived and worked in many places and has completed large scale sculpture projects in several countries including Hungary, Israel, Finland, Latvia, Estonia and the United States. He has shown widely and is represented in many public and private collections. He has been called upon to lecture on his sculpture and to chair panels at many colleges, and conferences both national and international.
Artist Statement
Air, earth, fire and water- our relationship to the world is through its material reality. Our connections are physical. Ancient societies imbued their environments with spiritual content. The rocks, the trees, the dirt and the water were the physical representations of their spiritual lives. Fire was at the center of it all, a representation of the sun and the first light. We created Gods and Goddesses to manifest our romantic notions and spiritual needs, our needs for both heat and light.
