"Well, we moved to our new home last July (that's my photo of it below), and we're finally getting settled in. I know I dropped the ball with some people and didn't return all the phone messages and emails I received-don't take it personal and please stay in touch! If you haven't heard from me please send me another message, I'm at steve@stevenkozar.com. Thanks for your patience! Also, here's my official new studio phone number: 608-838-8963." -Steve

Messages from Steve (newest ones are below)...

Here's my comments from last year...

     "I've had a strange and wonderful 20 years of making paintings! Over the past few years I've made some major changes to my career, and it seems to be working. Over the years, I used to sell most of my original paintings thru very exclusive galleries in Milwaukee, Chicago, New York, etc...but now I'm representing myself completely. I've attended about 25 art fairs in 2006, and I'll be doing even more in 2007; this is my major income source now, as well as having a web store and various customers buying things here and there.

       Although I don't have the "instant prestige" of exclusive galleries anymore, I'm showing my paintings to a much larger audience now, and I've finally got a (somewhat) regular income! Thank you to everyone who has visited my booth at art fairs and visited this site-I really do appreciate each and every one of you. Most of all, I have the ongoing privilege of making paintings for a living-thanks to all of my customers. Your money is going directly to support me and my family (so please-keep it up!). I will continue creating the best artwork I can in the years to come, so I hope you'll stay in touch to see what I come up with."

                                                                    -Steven Kozar, January 2007

Now for some more strange news...

    "We are moving-again! We didn't gather up enough money to buy the house we've been living in for the past year, so we'll be moving at the end of July. We'll be in a great house in our "old" neighborhood in McFarland, just down the road from the duplex we rented for 2 years. Although it will be a big pain to move again, we really believe this will be for the better. I've had to cancel my appearance at the Appleton, WI art fair; otherwise, we'll be going to all the shows as usual and we'll still have our big Christmas Open House the first weekend of December. Thank you to everyone for buying my art during this past year-you really did help us to buy our first home, it was just a different (and much less expensive) one. I hope to see you soon!"

                                                                                               -Steven Kozar, July 2007

Happy New Year 2008!...

     "For some reason my software started working again after about 6 months of not being able to update this web site. So I will hurry up and write this before it stops working! This year I'll be doing a bunch of the shows that I went to last year (the calendar will be updated in the Spring as dates become finalized) and I hope to do a bunch of new paintings that are waiting inside my already full head. I also have another project that I hope to debut over the course of this coming year-a documentary film about the crazy stuff I go through to make a living. It'll be very fun to watch-no boring artsy fartsy talk. In fact, I hope to lampoon the art world (and maybe the whole world) with the movie. But you'll just have to come back to see our progress in the months to come. We won't release it until at least next Spring, but I want to show clips of it here on the web site first. My son, Andrew, will be my film-making partner in this project, but the whole family will be involved, too. The two of us will also be writing and performing all the music for the film, and there will be an instrumental music CD (or two) to be released along with the film! As always, thanks for visiting my site!!"

                                                                                                   -Steven Kozar, January 2008

Spring 2008...

    "Well my schedule is just about complete for this year-check out my calendar and stop and see me at an art fair if you can! I'm looking forward to getting outside again-we had quite a long Winter. My software has been working fine since my last message, so I hope to continue updating this site as often as I can. There will be more new paintings as the year progresses so stay tuned. Also, thanks to all of you who have told your friends about this web site and my art work!"

                                                                            -Steven Kozar, April 2008

Many of you know I'm a big music buff, so I thought I'd include a link to my Amazon.com profile that I'm working on...amazon.com

The artist's resume (click to read)

Here's a brief biographical sketch:

Steven Robert Kozar was born in 1964 in Illinois, where he lived until moving to Wisconsin in 1986.  He grew up in Lake Zurich, IL, a (then) small town approximately 35 miles northwest of Chicago.  His parents moved to Lake Zurich from Chicago right before he was born.  Although he lived on the edge of farm country, he had no history of rural or agricultural living in his family.

“One of my favorite childhood memories is feeding grass to the cows that lived on the farm down the street.  We had a large field (with a nearby creek) across the street and a wooded area behind us.”

            For as long as he remembers, he was always busy drawing.  By fifth grade his drawings could have passed for high school work, and he won various awards along the way.  His interest in architecture and Frank Lloyd Wright caused him to draw detailed images from the books he repeatedly checked out of the local library.  The modern American sculptor/artist Alexander Calder was also a big favorite.  Kozar spent hours in the basement with a blowtorch making mobiles (hanging sculptures) out of thin sheet metal and wire.

“I felt driven to create things.  A perfect day for me would have been to be left alone with a gigantic pile of junk so I could make something out of it.”

            Around the same time (fifth or sixth grade) he became familiar with the painting of Andrew Wyeth.  As a youngster, Kozar enjoyed staring out the car window at the repeating rows of corn in the surrounding countryside, and he was especially fond of the rolling farmland in nearby Wisconsin.  Seeing Wyeth’s work instilled a deeper love of the rural landscape in him, as well as an interest in watercolor.  A high school art teacher prompted him to copy a Wyeth painting in watercolor, and within a few hours he painted an amazing duplicate.  His relationship to watercolor was cemented on that day.

“My art teacher, Bill Weber, told me that I could make a living as an artist/illustrator when he saw what I did.  I remember being very excited about it.”

            In high school, Kozar experienced his parents’ divorce at an already difficult time in his young life.   After having just begun getting into trouble with the wrong crowd he was invited to a “Campus Life” club in his town- a non-denominational ministry of Youth for Christ.  Along with providing a deep and lasting spiritual foundation for him, the group spent extensive time camping, rock climbing, canoeing, and bicycling in Wisconsin.   Kozar's love of the rolling farmland of Wisconsin was permanently cemented at that time.

“I’m thankful that my best teenage memories involve time spent in the beauty and quietude of the outdoors, talking and thinking about the really important matters of life.”

            Kozar was also becoming permanently cemented to Paulette during that same time.  They knew each other since kindergarten and began dating at age fourteen.  While the teenage Kozar tried to decide what to do with his life, Paulette was already dreaming of marrying him and helping him to become a great artist.

            As a somewhat anti-establishment teenager, Kozar was bored with much of high school and had marginal interest in college.  After high school he began work as a construction worker taking apart old barns.  After a year and a half of low-paying physical labor, he was given the task of making a pencil drawing of the barn framework as a guide to re-build the structure elsewhere.  Sitting in a field drawing while his workmates swung sledgehammers gave Kozar a very profound thought;

“I should be using my God-given talent for art instead of wasting my life doing construction work!”

            He enrolled at Illinois State University for the simple reason that some friends went there.  He enjoyed studying European History and Art History (as well as Music Theory) but was dissatisfied with the lack of disciplined training going on at the time.  Ironically, as an underclassman he never met or studied with Harold Gregor at I.S.U.  Gregor is considered the “dean “ of Midwestern realism landscape painters, and today Kozar and he exhibit together on occasion.

“My time at the University was helpful because I gained a broader perspective on art and its place in history.  It was also a difficult time because what I was interested in-drawing and painting realistically-was looked down upon by many of my teachers.”

            Kozar left I.S.U. after only a year and a half to attend classes at the American Academy of Art in Chicago.   The Academy was a small private art school still teaching some of the old principles of drawing and painting that had been discarded by much of academia. When Kozar saw examples of student work, he knew he’d found a place that could teach him what he really wanted to learn-how to draw and paint.

“We didn’t look at pictures of art in books-we did it.  All day long, five days a week, all we did was draw and paint.  I was like a starving man who just stepped into an all-you-can-eat buffet!”  

            Because Kozar was always the best in whatever art class he took, he never felt very challenged in school-until he found himself in Life-Drawing 101 at the American Academy of Art.   Two things caused him to accelerate and grow his skills very quickly at the art school; one, he saw students that could draw and paint better than him, which brought out a more competitive side to his usually laid-back personality.  And two, he was a twenty-one year old newlywed trying to “get good” in a hurry so he could support a wife and, eventually, a family. 

            Living in a tiny studio apartment in downtown Chicago, Kozar vowed to Paulette that he’d be a nationally known artist in five years.  In the isolation of that cramped apartment, he worked constantly at improving his skills.  When not in class he was visiting the Art Institute of Chicago, or reading about art and artists at the Chicago Public Library.   Even at an art school full of art students his classmates would say “is that all you talk about-art?!” 

            Living in the city invigorated him, and surrounding himself with art on a daily basis reinforced the idea that he could become a professional artist.  It’s interesting to note that some of today’s best artists were also attending the academy at that time. 

“I was in class with Nancy Guzik, Rose Frantzen, Joe Lorusso, Tim Liess, and others, all in that short period of a year and a half.  Right before I started Dan Gerhartz finished, and as I was leaving Scott Burdick was getting started.  I regret that I didn’t maintain more relationships from that time, but I’m honored to have been among such a strong group of artists.”  

            At the American Academy of Art, Kozar changed from un-focused to laser-focused.  His determination was partly the result of the sound disciplined training he received; but it was also a reaction against the instructors that seemed to promote a narrow view of what a watercolor (or oil) painting should look like. 

“Looking back, I was very stubborn about what I considered good painting.  Unfortunately, I left school with a chip on my shoulder.  The school leaned heavily towards a looser, more “expressive” style of painting but I was only interested in a more photo-realistic style of painting.  My anger propelled me to paint like crazy, although that wasn’t my main motivation.  I basically wanted to be left alone so I could go out and make the paintings I envisioned in my head.  Within a couple of years I was able to look back at the work I’d produced and realize that I’d done it.”  

            Kozar decided to make the jump into full time painting at the age of twenty-two.  He’d heard story after story of commercial artists working for twenty or thirty years and then finally going into fine art painting-doing what they really wanted to do. 

“Paulette and I decided to skip the twenty or thirty year part.  We had an art show at my Mom’s house where I had a bunch of drawings and paintings for sale-it was work I produced during the previous year at the art school.  We literally prayed for money to move out of the city and for a car.  God answered quite directly:  we were at church when a stranger approached us and asked if we’d like to buy his car for a dollar.   Then, in the afternoon, we made over two thousand dollars at the little art show at my Mom’s.  We took it as a sign.” 

Kozar eventually moved to rural Wisconsin where he immersed himself in the landscape.  He’s taken many thousands of slides and continues to spend time looking for new things to paint.

“One of my favorite things is being outdoors, exploring the countryside and looking for new compositions.  I feel like I’ve only scratched the surface of the beauty I see.”

            It is not uncommon for people who have just discovered Kozar’s work to ask, “how come he’s not more famous?”  Success in the art world is often the result of long-term, consistent promotion of an artist’s work.  Kozar has been carried sporadically by different galleries in several regions of the country, but he hasn’t had the kind of long-term exposure necessary to develop a very big following.

            “I’ve been disappointed by galleries and publishers that have made big promises and then go out of business; or have fazed me out in order to work with more “profitable” artists.   That’s why I’m so excited about having my own website, going to art fairs and publishing my own prints.  I hope to make a lot of new friends with this approach.  A lot of people are put off by the mass-market, shopping mall galleries that push the same things over and over.  All I want to do is paint what’s really in my heart.  I know that sounds corny, but it’s true.  I've been able to take out the middle man and simply be myself and tell my own story. Thanks for listening-and looking!”

That's the wrong phone number at the bottom...