#MeetHeraartistJohnKotula
"I have been drawing continuously, at times obsessively, for more than fifty years."
I have thought of myself as an artist since third grade when my classmates started asking me to draw things for them. For a while, maybe it was only a week, I spent every recess drawing pages of airplanes, aircraft carriers, and battleships. My friends would then play war by covering the drawings all over with arching lines that indicated a shot had been fired and scribbles that showed a hit. I missed getting to fight the battles myself, especially making the sound effects, but I loved being recognized for drawing the best armaments.
I have been drawing continuously, at times obsessively, for more than fifty years. My choice of materials comes and goes and comes back again: pencils, charcoal, conte, ink, crayons, china markers, pastels, chalk. Over the years, I have drawn anything and everything (with the human figure as a constant): portraits, self portraits, apples on reflective surfaces, Chinese take out cartons, Wonder Woman’s glass airplane, rubber animals, nuns, swimming goggles, copies of Caravaggio, Velasquez, Homer, Hopper and Diego Rivera. Through all the changes in materials and subject matter, what has always been true is that I love making marks and seeing them accumulate to reveal an image. I also paint and make prints, but drawing has always been more important to me.
What do you want people to walk away with after experiencing your work?
What influences your work? Why?
The content of my artwork is pretty much all memoir. Hopefully, it tells the story of what I have seen, experienced, thought about, had feelings about, found important, etc. Hopefully it tells the story in an engaging way.
In terms of technique, I’ll do just about anything that comes to mind to make it interesting to look at and think about. It is my guess that anybody who looks at very much of my work will get it that I have paid attention to art history across different time periods and cultural contexts. I’m sure not reinventing the wheel.
What does it mean to you to participate in Hera, either as an artist member OR as an exhibiting artist?
I can’t even remember how long I’ve been an artist member at Hera, but it has been a long time. Hera has presented me many, many opportunities to show my work, to develop and curate shows of other peoples work, to influence the community through the arts, and to have access to other artists for discussion and collaboration.
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