Sam with beverages at the Smash Palace, Gizzy New Zealand
Greetings, fellow Homo sapiens.
I have lived in the Pacific Northwest (USA) since 1994. And I’ve spent most of my life in Southeast Portland (since 1997) where my wife and I raised two awesome daughters.
My Background: I’ve always been fascinated by the natural world, and I’ve always been drawing pictures. I remember keeping a “bugbook” when I was about 6 years old, taping bugs into a diary. Poor things.
I have a degree in Zoology from the University of Wisconsin. I’ve worked with wild howler monkeys in Belize, learned to scuba dive, and worked with endangered spotted owls on Mt. Hood National Forest for several years. My wildlife work expanded to other rare, endangered, and threatened species: forest predators, bats, other raptors, red tree voles, rare slugs and snails, and, my favorites, forest floor bugs.
Around 1998, I became a zookeeper at the Oregon Zoo. During the summer months I ran the “Insect Zoo” with a group of teenage volunteers. My experience working with these kids in relation to bugs led to pursuing my current career as public high school teacher.
Now I teach biological sciences and art in a public alternative high school in a Portland suburb.
Artwork: I don’t have an art degree or formal training. Much of the inspiration for my art comes from observing and considering life from the forests of Oregon: plants, trees, bugs, fungi, and lichens. I also get ideas through my work with students, from music and psychedelic art, old comics and cartoons, looking through microscopes, gardening, political issues, and my own imagined narratives. I cherish the suspension of time, ego, and obligation that I feel when I’m making art.
Art is a form of communication that transcends language boundaries and often defies simple literal translation. As I develop as an artist, one of my goals is to communicate subtle ideas through my paintings that can invoke layered contemplation. It’s important to be able to create visual work that can be revisited, with the potential to offer up something new each time it is observed.
I tend to switch art mediums every few years. Much of what you see in this gallery is spray paintp-based. Other pieces are watercolor and ink. Some are oil pastels. There’s an etching as well. I enjoy process-laden approaches to art making and the problem solving and the curious mysteries produced by “accidents”.
A common thread through much of my art, regardless of medium, is an illustrative quality. I am continually drawn to the black line, regardless of the medium I work with.
Folks say that some of my pictures look like they were made by different artists. That could be seen as good or bad. I guess I tend to make serious changes in direction and dive down “rabbit holes” for periods of time.
Feel free to contact me with ideas, questions, consignment ideas, to order a print or original, or to request more information.
My email:
samkossart@gmail.com