Artist to Watch

Bonnie Gangelhoff

Kyle Polzin is capturing the character of vintage objects

	ADVENTUROUS SPIRIT, OIL, 12 x 16.

For Texas-based painter Kyle Polzin, the past 12 months have been nothing but astounding. His good fortune began to unfold last fall when Polzin, 34, had a sell-out show at Southwest Gallery in Dallas. It included 26 paintings, mostly still lifes and a few landscapes depicting the scenic Hill County. “That show started things rolling,” Polzin recalls. It was his first solo show.

Several months later, he joined forces with his former instructor, well-known Texas artist Dalhart Windberg, for a show at the Rockport Center for the Arts in Rockport, TX. Again, Polzin sold all of his works. When Southwest Art caught up with the painter in September, he had just returned from Jackson, WY, where Legacy Gallery had also hosted a sold-out show of his works. “Things are on fire right now, and I am doing everything I can to keep up,” Polzin says.

He’s been so busy, in fact, that the Jackson trip was his first foray out of Texas for any kind of a vacation in a long time. A self-confessed night owl, Polzin says he frequently works until about 2 o’clock in the morning and does some of what he considers his best creative thinking in these wee hours. “I paint around the clock,” he says, only half-jokingly—he does in fact work for 12 to 16 hours a day.

	HYDRANGEAS, OIL, 16 x 22.

Although he began his career as a landscape painter, these days he is mostly drawn to the still-life genre. This, he says, is in part because of his attraction to vintage objects such as well-worn saddles or old pilot’s goggles that he discovers in antiques stores. “I’m trying to capture the character things take on with time, and their texture,” Polzin says.

One way he captures the character of the items in his table-top tableaux is through lighting. Wrinkled baseball gloves and rusty spurs are bathed in a chiaroscuro-style illumination commonly found in works by the Dutch masters. Thus it comes as no surprise when Polzin says his inspiration springs from the likes of Rembrandt and Vermeer. “I enjoy the mood they created in their paintings—the shadowy drama,” he explains.

Polzin grew up in Victoria, TX, where his father was a painter in his spare time and his grandfathers were both skilled craftsmen. During his childhood, he spent a lot of time on the Gulf Coast near Port O’Connor, where he fished in the bays with his family. These early experiences, he says, fostered his interest in landscape painting.

After high school graduation he attended Victoria College and began his formal training in the fine arts. He later studied with Windberg, who Polzin credits with helping him to launch his fine art career. Today, Windberg Enterprises publishes limited-edition reproductions of his work. And recently Polzin also signed on with Somerset Publishing House.

Indeed, things are going well for the up-and-coming artist these days. “If I had an extra set of hands and eyes, it would be good,” Polzin says. “I am so fortunate right now the way things are going. At this point I am just counting my blessings and trying to keep the quality there while coming up with new ideas.”

He is represented by Legacy Gallery, Jackson, WY, and Scottsdale, AZ; Southwest Gallery, Dallas, TX; The Windberg Art Gallery, Georgetown, TX; Port A Gallery, Port Aransas, TX.