Meet Zak Zaikine
Zak Zaikine
I knew at 4 years old that I was going to be an artist. I have been a self employed artist for over 42 years. I was born into an artist family, in Queens, New York, with my dad being a Russian Immigrant painter. I drew pictures at a very young age and began to work with clay at the age of ten. At Jamaica High School in Queens I took a clay class and graduated with the New York City Ceramic Award. At 19 I began attending Pratt Institute while also working at Pan Am Airlines. Later, while renting a body shop I began to experiment on automobiles with color and form. I won “Car of the Year” award and appeared on the cover of Cars Magazine in 1962. I also had my first one person show at a New York gallery in 1963 of my works in steel and experimental resins.
In 1964 I owned my own body shop and used this opportunity to work on my metal sculptures using the welding and sanding machines at the shop selling them in arts & craft festivals, art galleries and street fairs and winning awards for these sculptures.
In 1969 I moved to Ohio and had a number of one person shows in Cincinnati. In Ohio I had begun to experiment in printmaking while continuing to work on my sculptures. In 1980 I went to the Woodstock School of Art studying under Nicholas Buhalis for three years. (This is the summer extension of the Art Student League of N.Y.) This is when I began to do my painting and drafting in earnest. All the while I continued my selling and exhibitions at galleries. In 1985 I moved to California and developed my welded, painted, storytelling sculptures. I returned to ceramics full blast in 1987 and have continued to work in clay ever since. I also appeared on the cover of Clay Magazine in 1997.
In 1982, Jay Johnson of American Folk Heritage Gallery of New York City called me a neo-folk artist. I liked the title and it has stayed with me since then. As a neo-folk artist, I am best known for my animal artwork — whimsical paintings of dogs and cats and fish and chickens. I am also well known for my figurative bronze sculptures, my colorful metal sculpture, and my highly decorative ceramics, all of which have earned me over 30 blue ribbons and first place awards from 1959 through the present day. My original works are in the high hundreds for very small pieces, to the low to mid thousands for larger pieces if you can find them. I have also been featured in national publications, and have had numerous private and corporate exhibitions of my collections at galleries such as San Francisco's Museum of Modern Art; the Laguna Art Museum in Laguna Beach, California; the Ann Leonard Gallery in Woodstock, New York; and the Jamie Szoke Gallery in Soho, New York. As an artist and sculptor living in California, my work possesses a whimsical, child-like quality filled with Chagall-like attributes—fanciful, magical and mysterious. Like Chagall, I share a Russian heritage and from that tradition, with my own interpretation, my paintings create folklore and iconographic references that both beguile and enlighten. As a folk art painter, storyteller and illustrator, I continue to delight my readers and viewers, young and old alike.
An American Heirloom Crafts Initiating Artist.
