Category: Q&A

Michael Netter

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.

“Three Wise Men”, mixed media on canvas, 62 x 66 in | 157 x 168 cm, 1995

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. 

Michael Netter, self portrait.

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

Peter Falk

Q&A with American Art Expert Peter Falk

Peter has been a leader in art reference publishing during the past 40 years. He is best known as the author of the biographical dictionary, Who Was Who in American Art. He is currently the Chief Curator and Editor of Discoveries in American Art, which is the only art publication largely focusing on bringing greater recognition to the lives and works of artists that were marginalized or slipped through the cracks of art history.

Peter Falk, photo by Don Leeds.

How did you get started in the art world?

It’s in the genes. My mother was an artist and went to RISD. At Brown, I was split between art studio and art history. I did my graduate work at RISD. Then I had no money. Zero. I liked poking around the antique shops in Providence and would pick up Old Master prints, becoming self-taught. I kept turning $20 purchases into $500 by selling them to galleries in New York and Boston, realizing I was becoming a “picker” a.k.a a “runner.” But I also knew that it was too tough to continue that route as a sustainable business. Fortunately, one day I found some drawings in a shop that looked an awful lot like those of Winslow Homer. I did research and tracked down the artist’s estate collection. Turned out the artist was a good friend of Homer but he wound up becoming completely forgotten. He was historically significant, having produced a huge series of on-the-spot drawings documenting the Civil War battles, post-war reconstruction, and the nation’s Westward expansion. This huge  collection had been stored away in trunks in a log cabin on the edge of the Vermont State Forest. I was stunned. The family was willing to sell, and in full bravado I convinced … Click here to read more

Lenora Rosenfield

Artist Q&A with Lenora Rosenfield

Lenora was born in Porto Alegre, Brazil and in the last 20 years she is painting in a new fresco procedure, she created made of synthetic materials for building constructions, one of her researches.

“DNA”, synthetic fresco on non woven fabric, 38 x 57 in | 98 x 146 cm, 2020

How did you become a professional artist?

I think art chose me, because I never thought of something else seriously. Everything I thought since I was a little child was related to art.

When is a piece finished for you?

There is something in my body that tells me to stop. I have a feeling of being full, like after I had a big and great meal. 

What are the influences and inspirations in your work?

As a teenager I was first influence by Hieronymus Bosch, after by the expressionist like Goya that I conceder one of the first expressionist, and later Van Gogh. In Brazil I was very influenced by Ibere Camargo, by his brush strokes freedom to paint). American artists I was very inspired by Eva Hesse, the way she thought about art, and Robert Morris’ wool felt. Since I started to work with maps, I realized how I was also inspired by my travels and my grandparents that came from four different countries: Russia, Poland, Ukraine and Turkey. I met them all and the first one died when I was 20 years old. I was always very curious about them, how they got to Brazil and how was their lives before. I am very influence by that. I love to know my own and the human being origins, about the cave man and all the layers, what came first, and that research never ends. It is difficult to tell about my inspirations … Click here to read more