O'Dork's Nonogon
2 primary works
Book 2
As happened in those heady days in the early 1970s at university, our intrepid artist O'Dork felt the mystical vibe. This second book in 'The Nonogon Trilogy' by Pete Kennedy, follows O'Dork into the realm of the collective unconscious, where he uses his artistic techniques to draw and paint the mystical visions of peoples and seers. He feels connected and has the tools to express it. We see a fluid use of portraiture reaching into the minds of the sitters, together with caricatures of alter-egos, imps, dolls, and powers of these people. He portrays a kind of anthropological imagining of their cultures and myths and develops his own myth or fantasy play, enacted by his Nonogon Nomads characters. Some of these are based upon the form and characters of Pete Kennedy's real-life friends and the seers that he has read about, but assuming powers now, like the mystical tribes.
Book 3
"Pete Kennedy, you have an amazing talent for describing, both in text and image, the very specific and personal while making the reader feel included. We can see reflections of ourselves and a strong connection with what you're telling. In all your books you mix poetry, imagination, image, reality and (sur)reality. I always feel like I'm moving really fast when I'm reading your books. Grabbing a beautiful phrase here, pausing on fabulous drawing there, being whisked off to a strange place, then handed something familiar to bring me back to my own self and my own identity before being hurled off into another world I half-recognise. It's exciting. It's both a real and an unreal journey and I as a reader can choose where and when I get off and on." -- Gary Malkin