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Honoring the Artist: Michael Kotasek - Marion Wolberg Weiss
It's hard to comprehend that the artist who painted this week's cover doesn't live on the East End. His "Clam Pot" is so evocative that we'd swear he was born and bred by the bay. But Michael Kotasek has lived his entire life in upstate New York, Endwell to be exact - a place far from the local waters and clam shells.
Q: You're near Binghamton, oddly enough a place I know well having lived there. From that upstate perspective, what kind of subject matter do you usually paint?
A: Still life, landscapes. I used to paint with watercolor and egg tempera, but a year ago I changed to oil.
Q: Where do the shells come in?
A: I come to Sag Harbor each year and paint or take home drawings to do in my studio. I have also painted things like front porches of the homes here.
Q: So that's where the sea comes in. Do you come in the summer when it's so crowded?
A: Oh no. I come in the off-season. It's desolate, but no one is looking over my shoulder while I paint. I like to come in the fall, after the leaves have dropped off the trees.
Q: Why are you attracted to shells?
A: My parents had a house in Florida by the water. I guess I really got to like the setting.
Q: Do you see yourself living and/or painting someplace else in the future, by the water?
A: I will continue to come to Sag Harbor and perhaps go to the coast of Maine; I remember taking a trip there when I was in high school, and the memory stayed with me.
Q: How did you get into art in the first place?
A: I majored in illustration in the mid-1980s and got a BFA at Syracuse University. After that I did freelance illustration up to the 1990s for ad agencies and once for Reader's Digest. But I prefer to paint what I want, not what other people want.
Q: That dissatisfaction led you where?
A: Landscape design. In the late '90s, I happened to visit Longwood Gardens in Pennsylvania and while I was there I went to the Brandywine River Museum. That experience motivated me to return to painting,
Q: Just think, you might still be planting bushes if you hadn't gone on that trip. It was fate.
A: Maybe so. I started entering art exhibits and winning awards. And getting into New York shows and exhibits that went around the country. I remember being the subject of an article in Watercolor Magic Magazine as a result of my shows.
Q: So that was fate, too, in a way. It was also fate that your parents, especially your mother, was (and still is) a folk artist - your first exposure to art.
A: (laughing) My initial experience was my first mural that I scribbled on the wall when I was young. I was always sitting around drawing. I would also dye and design eggshells with my brother - we got that from my mother who still does it as part of the Czech folk art tradition. In fact, she's been invited by UNESCA to a folk art event in Prague.
Q: It just occurred to me, the experience with eggshells at an early age may have attracted you to other kinds of shells, like clams. But there are more connections; you described your paintings as whimsical. Maybe that's related to your comedy writing.
A: I did try comedy writing and in 1993 sent some material to David Letterman. If it's accepted, you get paid by the joke. I just didn't pursue it.
Q: What do you think you will pursue in the future?
A: I have considered doing printmaking and more figurative pieces. But I know I will be coming every year to Sag Harbor.
Michael Kotasek's work is available for view at Sag Harbor's Grenning Gallery. His website is www.kotasek.com
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