Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Paul Kolazinski. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Alright, Paul thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Can you tell us about a time that your work has been misunderstood? Why do you think it happened and did any interesting insights emerge from the experience?

My push and pull work is a true bridge between painting and sculpture. These two worlds exist for a reason. They conform to people’s natural sensibilities in terms of understanding what the experience is. Paintings is very accessible to most everyone. Sculpture is far less of a common experience for art viewers. Even for artists, sculpture is something that is more foreign, more removed from their ready conception of what art is. Many artists, if not most, or even all artists, specialize in one format. For example, portrait painting in oil, or landscape or street art. very seldom does art blend two genre, because both artists and viewers find comfort in the predicability of the experience. For most people, my art, blending the two worlds of painting and sculpture, is not a natural place to begin the art experience. it is however, very natural for me. In school, my painter friends would comment on the colors, and my sculpture friends would comment on the shape. so even very smart, very interested artists, find what I do polarizing and confusing on a fundamental level. My unique sculpture pieces, built with traditional canvas techniques and materials, is very natural for me, but is foreign to most.

Paul, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

in first or second grade, the teacher asks what kids want to be when they grow up, and you got a lot of fireman, veterinarian, doctor, astronaught, this kind of thing. but I knew i wanted to be an artist, as soon as I found out it was even possible. my thought was, “you mean people actually get paid to make art for other people? Oh well, that’s what I’m going to do.” I was a handyman starting after high school, and those skills just kept building. in art school, you realize that making art, especially sculpture, is just problem solving. you are literally making something that has never existed before, and a lot of times, there is no instruction book. as a beginning painting student, we were taught how to build our own canvas stretchers, to save huge amounts of money. you can build your own canvas for 20 cents on the dollar compared to an art store shelf product., sometimes, even more. I made one with a defect, and realized I could do the defect on purpose, and then got very excited about all the choices I could make before I even opened up the paint. my push and pull work is a series of endless experiments to see which shape works, with what painting on top, and all the combinations that can come about. I find it endlessly fascinating.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

in art school, I had one semester in particular, where I loaded up heavy on academic classes, and light on art classes. after a time, my mental health was suffering. I literally had to go make art, so that I could feel normal again. it was a noticeable change, to remove art making from my life. and it also was an immediate fix, to return to making art, as a return to my humanity. I knew at my core of humanity that im an artist. I know this is my path. this is not a choice. this is the reason I was born. my unique history of ancestors in craft, seeing, expression, thought, perception, making things with my hands, all lead me to the truth, this is what im supposed to do. doing what I know im supposed to do, as a human, is as rewarding as it gets for me.

How did you build your audience on social media?

social media is a weird trap. building an audience doesn’t matter. anything you share, has to be authentic. you have to want to share it, and it just so happens that social media now exists, as a platform to do so.. if you have 88 followers, and you think your life will be better if you have 100, you’re wrong. nothing changes. even if you have 1,000 followers, it doesn’t translate into sales, or success, or meeting other interested capable artists with meaningful relationships. its all extra. 30,000 views of your video doesn’t translate into sales. its a false sense of accomplishment. the numbers are only counting. they are not a measure of success, or value, or importance. other artists are just going to copy your best stuff, and that’s the way it should be. after a while you find others who are in a similar trajectory as you, and you create a self gratifying loop, that makes you better. you stay engaged with the art, you keep getting inspired from others tangential ideas relevant to yours, and it all keeps the wheel turning. its just a global anonymous peer group, and outsiders get to watch. that’s it.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://kolazinski.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kolazinski/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/paul.kolasinski.3
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHyU4ABP5adh5I3h_R5BuFA

Image Credits
all images are mine.