My name is Zacheriah Kramer. I'm a self taught
painter, currently working in watercolor
and acrylic. I currently live in a little town called Tranås in
south-central Sweden.
I was born in 1979 in Northern Colorado
to a nature-loving father and an artistic mother. I always enjoyed
sketching as a kid, filling the pages of my Big Chief sketchbooks with
drawings of fish, birds, farm animals, and my family. At the age
of 8, I entered a state-wide art competition for the Rocky Mountain
Bighorn Sheep society. I took first place in my age group with a
poster sized pencil and pastel drawing of a bighorn standing on a ridge
with the front range in the background. Since then I have become
an accomplished graphite and colored
pencil realist, and have done drawings by commission fairly regularly
for the past six years.
I recently turned my energy to painting. The depth, color,
and expressive detail that can be achieved with a brush and paint is
wonderful. My foundation in pencil drawing has helped me quickly
become established as a painter, and has effected my work
heavily. I often get comments from people who say that they are
amazed at the detail I have achieved with watercolor - a medium which
most consider to be difficult to control. My work has received
special recognition from several online galleries, and has already
begun to sell locally.
I have long been interested in expression through
creativity, and the ability we have as humans to thoughtfully add
something unique to the world around us. My studies in both
philosophy and art history have influenced many of my more creative
drawings and paintings, yet I'm not interested in attempting to
illustrate ideas or ideologies through art. Language is a much better medium for those things in my view. Painting is the result of the joy of creating and decorating - of grappling with the world around us, both the
subjective and the objective, and playfully summarizing what we find,
through light and color and form. Through painting, we use our experiences, our interests, and our perspectives to decorate the world around us, to add something personal to the world we live in, to dress up our surroundings with that which we find interesting or beautiful. My images, therefore, will never
be aimed at making a political statement. In my view, painting is
simply not about propaganda, but about aesthetics.
Zacheriah Kramer