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Artist and writer Benjamin Zoltak was born in 1972 in Honolulu, Hawaii. At the ripe old age of two he and his family moved back to Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He has made art all his life, beginning with many drawings and paintings as a child. He has written all his life, composing dozens of obsessed poems for his unrequited high school sweet heart later to become his wife. He is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin in Stevens Point. In the summer of 1994 before receiving his Bachelors Degree in Fine Arts and Creative Writing Benjamin traveled to Amsterdam. Here he visited the Van Gogh, Stedelijk, and Rijks Museums. He also met with other world artists sharing ideas and theories with each. With his BFA in hand, Benjamin went to work as: a sculpture detailer, a woodshop assistant, a theatre prop assistant, a silk screener, an art teacher, an investigator and finally an art critic.
He has made installation art filling hundreds of feet of space. He has performed “action” paintings in the spirit of Pollack, throwing paint onto canvas and plastic. He has made triptychs over twelve feet tall. He has painted: Folk, Renaissance, Modern, Impressionistic, Constructivist and most importantly his own sculpturally visceral paintings. Benjamin has exhibited his work at alternative spaces in Chicago, IL; Milwaukee, WI; and Minneapolis, MN. He has worked on oil painting commissions of children, cityscapes as well as vampires. His work has been sold to patrons in many parts of the United States. His strongest convictions and inspirations come from Van Gogh, Tolliver, Close, Pollack and Schnabel. Not to mention Irving, Dostoyevsky, King, Vonnegut, Silverstein and Thoreau.
He strongly believes that the arts are firmly ignored by most of the mass media and feels even Agent Orange couldn’t wipe out all the hot dogs, Cubs and Bears growth that fill the many dead trees of Chicago’s newspapers. Never the less, he is another verbal Herman Munster and fire’s pot shots of artists tenacity at the bland multinational folderol.
Currently Benjamin resides in Lincoln Square on Chicago’s north side. He lives with his daughter and wife while working inside his studio and outside on the good earth.
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