Artist Q&A with Michael Netter
For more than 40 years, Michael Netter has been religiously creating video art, paintings and assemblages. A self-taught artist, he became a protégé of Andy Warhol, fully immersed in the dynamic art world of New York in the early 1970s. He is represented by ACA Galleries in New York.

How did you become a professional artist?
I was always an artist in a sense; always loved art and saw it as a calling. I guess that’s kind of a standard answer, but I’m mostly self-taught. As I reflect more on the question, I would say it was to put my creative self to work. That I want to manifest my ideas in a lasting form of communication in a more conceptual and less literal manner than through words.
When is a piece finished for you?
It’s magical – a piece feels unfinished until, with that one stroke, it’s all of a sudden finished. That can take 2 days or 10 years. I feel all work has the possibility of being good, you just must keep working at it. In fact, sometimes I have felt like gessoing over a painting that I can’t see any potential in only to finally discover a path that works much later on. This might happen in the last 5% of effort on a work.

What are the influences and inspirations in your work?
I try to resist being influenced by other artists although I might see some dimension of their art that gives me an idea. Some art influences/inspirations are – early Italian Renaissance painters like Cimabue, Fra Angelico, etc. because they are about icons and are relatively primitive; Paul Klee because much of … Click here to read more