He had me at “theoretically inclined.”
While my own doodles tend toward the surreal, my tastes as a consumer strongly favor the abstract — particularly where the artist can articulate the intent behind the brushstrokes (or the equivalent in other media).
Karl Knaths apparently shared the belief made popular (at least in writing) by Kandinsky (those of you who didn’t go to art school may not be familiar with his book Point and Line to Plane, but you might find it interesting), that there were painterly (space, shape, line, color) equivalents to the sounds of music (not the musical, silly). As I am not very articulate on this topic, I recommend further research on your part.
The MoMA owns at least one work by Mr. Knaths, who created one post office mural: Frontier Mail (Rehoboth Beach, Delaware).