Articles
U.S. Art Magazine |
April 2002 November 2001 September 1996 October 1993 May 1993 August 1992 |
by Jenny Sherman by James Aurer by James Aurer by James Aurer by Ina Pasch by Tom Davis |
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U.S. Art Magazine April 2002 Steven Kozar is nearsighted. His prescription registers at around a negative five, making corrective lenses a necessity. But despite his poor vision, the thirty-eight year old artist from Blue Mounds, Wisconsin, has managed to become one of the best realist landscape Painters around. His signature Midwestern scenes of calm streams scattering fingers of light from setting suns are incredibly detailed, and the number of collectors who see his talent in portraying the land with photographic precision is growing steadily. But over the past couple of years, Kozar discovered that his myopia extended to his to his artistic vision as well. “I was painting what I thought were good compositions,” he says of his dogmatic focus on realism. “But I did them over and over again. I was not willing to try something new.” It’s something the headstrong artist was at pains to admit. And he only did so, he says, after teetering on the brink of financial and artistic bankruptcy. “It’s not like I didn’t like other forms of art. One of my favorite artists growing up was Alexander Calder,” says Kozar, who as a youth made metal and wire creations based on Calder’s whimsical, abstract mobiles and visited the library to read up on Frank Lloyd Wright and Andrew Wyeth. The young artist’s gravitation toward realism was cemented when he encountered the works of Richard Estes and Ralph Goings. Coming out of pop art movement of the sixties, the two artists were among the first generation of photo realist painters. The heightened sense of perspective in their scenes of diners and pickup trucks, shopping centers and urban streets struck a nerve with Kozar. It was certainly what Kozar had in mind when he signed up for art classes at Illinois State University in 1983. He left the university after almost two years, however, because he felt that the school didn’t place enough emphasis on realism. He remembers one ‘Loosen up, be more expressive,’ then left,” Kozar recalls. “I totally ignored him, then got frustrated and drew a big black scribble over the drawing. He came back, looked over my shoulder, and said, ‘Good, good.’” Meanwhile, Kozar had heard about a small private art school that was teaching some of the more traditional principles of drawing and painting that meshed with his realist style. So he registered for classes at the American Academy of Art in Chicago and thrived there, learning the basics of perspective, composition and color. His now-successful classmates, including Nancy Guzik, Rose Frantzen, Joseph Lorusso and Tim Liess, also stimulated his desire to learn. “At the Academy, I found people who could draw better than me,” he says. “The first-year and second-year students could draw better than the grad students at ISU.” But the elation didn’t last. By 1986, Kozar was restless. He felt the curriculum leaning toward a looser style of painting than he was comfortable with. When his scholarship money ran out [note from Steve; I never actually had any scholarship], he and Paulette, his wife and high school sweetheart, decided to give his career as an artist a go. Luckily, an art show at his mother’s house raised two thousand dollars, and a good deal landed them a much-needed family station wagon. Now he was free to pursue art-his kind of art-the way he wanted to, free of academic models that stressed expressionism. Kozar flourished and his paintings began to attract fans. He even started producing prints as his first baby was scheduled to arrive. “I made my first offset lithograph in 1991,” he says. “The bank gave me a loan, and I totally lost my shirt.” He also tried a stint with Madison, Wisconsin-based publisher Stanton & Lee, but that company went out of business in 1993. Still eyeing a future in publishing, Kozar approached Minnesota-based publisher Wild Wings, which had courted him back in 1988. “I was reluctant to be too closely associated with wildlife art because I’m not a wildlife artist,” he says, explaining his first pass at a publishing deal with the company. “But when I saw an ad in U.S. Art that Wild Wings was starting a new division to feature non-wildlife art, I called them back up.” From 1994 to 1996, Kozar finally had success with his reproductions-that is, until the print business slowed down. Wild Wings, he says, became more cautious, publishing only one or two images a year. At the same time, he noticed he was becoming financially strapped. The realist style he had insisted on for so many years was, unfortunately, a very time consuming style. He wasn’t producing enough paintings to support his family, so Paulette got a job to help pay the bills. The crisis came to a head two years ago during a gallery appearance in Iowa that he says was a total flop. Discouraged, he left, and stopped in front of another gallery’s window. In it was a figurative painting by former classmate Rose Frantzen, whose more expressionistic style and obvious passion for painting reminded Kozar of what was missing in his career. “I kept hearing the words in my head: ’You were wrong’” he remembers. “On the three hour drive home, during the first hour or two, I just cried my head off. I had this feeling of sorrow that I’d been so stubborn.” It was then that Kozar finally realized that has rigid adherence to realism might have been a mistake-and perhaps his undoing. “I was stubborn about being a landscape realist and doing my paintings a certain way,” he says. “The last two years have been a time of soul searching, asking hard questions. Am I not really that good of a painter? Am I not relating to people?” Instead of putting down his brush for good, though, Kozar decided to open himself up to other options. Traditionally a watercolorist, he decided to try oils. And he began experimenting with a more impressionistic style. “I really didn’t know what the heck I was doing,” he admits. “I was very frustrated. It’s like knowing how to play the piano and being handed a guitar. It’s tough on your self-esteem.” But he stuck with it. Within a year he was comfortable with the switch, and the detail he so loved crept back into his painting. “I went all the way around the block and came back to where I was,” he laughs. Richard Knight, associate director of the Tory Folliard Gallery of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, which has sold Kozar’s work for the last decade, is excited about the change. “His style was very painstaking in process,” Knight says. “We’re hopping this new process and technique will help him produce more.” Kozar has also collected slides of new subject matter and has started to look at the landscape from a different point-of-view. “I have a lot of new ideas for more intimate scenes that relate to a larger number of people.” Another veil was lifted last February when he was diagnosed with attention deficit disorder. “I have a tendency to work in a way where I need to be aware of limitations and set parameters to help me focus more,” he says. “I’d have twenty, thirty, forty really neat ideas for painting, but I couldn’t pick which ones to do. To some extent, I wasn’t painting my very best work. I was painting the best painting to get published.” Kozar solved that dilemma by leaving Wild Wings last year and starting his own publishing company, Kozar Fine Art. “I now have the ability to make prints as I need them,” he says, lauding his newfound ability to print the images he thinks are best. Although he spent months researching the best digital printing equipment, made a hefty initial investment, and “didn’t know how to use a stinking computer,” he says it has all paid off. His career is looking more hopeful than it has in a long time as his future comes back into focus. Things are going so well that Paulette is thinking about quitting her job to become his full-time promoter [note from Steve: she quit her job in April ‘02]. His family is also planning a move to Madison this summer, where his three kids attend school. He’ll continue to paint, make prints, and seek gallery representation in New York [note from Steve: I’m now represented by NY gallery Bernarducci Meisel!]. And he also wants to mentor young painters and is working on a book about Christian artists. But most of all, he still just wants to make art the way he wants to, while being more welcoming to artistic opportunity. “Right now I feel more excited about being a painter than when I first got started,” he says. “It feels so good to be more open. I have these great paintings to do.” Written by Jenny Sherman “Midwest glows in artists’ hands”
The Midwestern landscape has almost become escapist fare, thanks to the grisly goings on in lower Manhattan and the alarming spread of potentially fatal infections. For that reason alone, an hour or so spent browsing at the Tory Folliard Gallery takes on something of the allure of a day in the country. Folliard’s show: “Reflections of the Heartland: Landscape Paintings,” consists of rural vistas by seven artists, plus nocturnal urban studies by an eighth, John Fennell. Steven Kozar’s watercolor on paper, “Farmland Morning in Dane County,” is as neatly ordered as a mid-19th-century Barbizon oil-and as touchingly innocent.” Written by James Aurer-Journal Sentinel Art Critic “Artists offer 3 takes on landscapes - Detailed realism, still life and Impressionism explored in show” Kozar, an Illinois native who studied at the American Academy of Art in Chicago, is an immaculate craftsman who, in this show, grows beyond exemplary technique into a kind of placid oneness with his subject matter. Several of his compositions are models of their kind. One of these, “Last Light on the Rhiner House,” is a marvel of detailed reportage and flawless timing. The final rays of the setting sun splash across the roof of the house, its windows and shingles, persuasively that the picture might well be a vintage snapshot. If anything, Kozar’s workmanship has matured and ripened since his earlier showing at the Tory Folliard Gallery. No flash in the pan, he is pretty much unrivaled at conveying trees reflected in water, melting shards of ice, and hilly, leafless vistas. Written by James Aurer-Journal Sentinel Art Critic "Landscape show fascinates with its wide horizon of styles and views - Kozar’s watercolors make a hit in group exhibit” The show is a pleasant, if undemanding, compendium of representational styles, as airy and liberating as a brisk walk, and most likely as healthful. The emergent star, to my way of thinking, is Steven Robert Kozar, who had a solo showing of his immaculately detailed watercolors earlier this fall at the Rahr-West Museum, Manitowoc. There’s a reverential hush to Kozar’s work, an element of love and regard for nature’s less obvious charms that delightfully counteracts our shared obsession with ugliness and gloom. Whether he’s dealing with leafless trees or aging Victorian homesteads, Kozar has a way of integrating the natural with the manmade that is humane and compassionate. Written by James Aurer-Milwaukee Journal Art Critic “Watercolor display is diverse - Regional landscape, color celebrated” It offers those who dare to indulge a spontaneity and immediacy unmatched in other media. At the same time, it allows no room for error. A brushstroke laid is a brushstroke played. As the watercolor medium grows, so grows its language of expression. One need only compare the work of artists such as Steven Kozar, Marilyn Simandle, David Coolidge and Joseph Raffael to note the tremendous variety of artistic vision. Kozar’s paintings are meticulous and realistic, as in his depiction of southwestern Wisconsin in “Quiet Summer Morning.” Not yet 30 years old, Kozar is already a noted artist. Once you view his work, you’ll understand why. There’s a serenity about his luminous, tightly rendered scenes-an innocence that draws the viewer into the environment. Kozar paints with uncompromising attention to detail, from his panoramic silent skies to his tiny wildflowers. Written by Ina Pasch Strictly speaking, there is no such animal, in the art world, as an overnight success. There are always dues to be paid. But if anyone comes close to satisfying the definition, it’s Steven Kozar. He’s only 28-and he’s been earning his keep as a landscape painter for six years. His accomplishment proves how potent a combination of talent, commitment and energy can be, especially when it’s catalyzed by a dash of blissful ignorance. “For me,” Kozar muses, “art was like a calling. It was as if I were a missionary. Looking back, I was very naïve.” But, at least in Kozar’s case, naiveté was an asset. By rights, he should have been scared to death at the prospect of starting an art career at ground zero, a complete unknown. Instead, he jumped in with both feet, and within six months his luminous, tightly rendered scenes of rural southwestern Wisconsin were fetching four figures at Samuel Stein Fine Arts in Chicago. Even Kozar, a man obviously not lacking in self-confidence, was surprised at how quickly his career got rolling. “So much for the idea,” he laughs, “that it takes seven years of suffering before you can make a living as an artist.” Born in northern Illinois, Kozar biked, hiked and camped in Wisconsin at every opportunity, forming an emotional connection that is at the core of his attraction to the state. “I always dreamed that some day I’d move to Wisconsin and be an artist,” he attests. Kozar was “immediately” drawn to watercolor, his medium of choice, in high school. He enrolled briefly at Illinois State, found the art department there to flabby for his liking, and transferred to the American Art Institute in Chicago. The Academy’s rigorous Curriculum was just what he needed. “It was paint and draw, paint and draw,” Kozar recalls. We didn’t look at art in books; we did it.” After a year and a half at the academy, Kozar instinctively it was time to “get out and do m own thing.” Living in downtown Chicago had sharpened his appreciation for the charms of the country; it was what he wanted to paint, and where he wanted to live. To Make the move, though, he needed cash and a car. He got both-on the same day. First, a virtual stranger approached Kozar in church and offered to sell him a car for $1.00. That afternoon, Kozar held a “yard sale” of watercolors he’d done in his classes, and netted a tidy two grand. “I took it as a sign,” he says. Since 1987, Kozar has lived and worked in Mt. Horeb. The gentle farmlands there provide ample fodder for his art. When the light is best-early morning, late afternoon-he drives the rural routs, eyes peeled for images that arrest his imagination. His camera is his the sketchpad. While Kozar’s highly detailed style is often labeled “photo realistic,” he admits to a touch of irritation when someone says, “Oh, your painting looks just like a photograph!” ‘My biggest concern is, what can I do to make this painting more than just a reproduction of a photograph?’ One of the reasons I like doing these broad panoramic scenes is that it forces the viewer to look at it in a different way.” As far as Kozar is concerned, art should be a vehicle for communication and enjoyment, not intellectual gymnastics. He’s always amused by such comments as, “I like your stuff-but I don’t know anything about music.”
Written by Tom Davis |
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