Ken Grimes was born in New York City on July 16, 1947, a day that correlates—the artist is apt to point out—with other significant world events, including the first moon landing and the first atomic bomb detonated in Los Alamos, New Mexico in 1943. When he was still very young his family moved from Manhattan to Westchester County, and back to New York City again before settling, when Grimes was six years old, in Cheshire, Connecticut, where he still resides.

Grimes’s paintings have gone through a number of media and styles, but he has diligently maintained themes of alien intervention, space signals, synchronicities and government cover-ups. He paints only in black and white, which he maintains is the most direct way of showing the contrast between truth and deception. These bold graphics created with black paint on white canvas and Masonite have become more iconographs than pictures. Sometimes a written statement will take up most of the piece, as if to remind us of the painting’s true purpose.