The Hard Part--Part I:

“He drew his grandparents and he got in every single wrinkle!”

“Well, that just makes him a dermatologist.”

The hard part is knowing what to leave out.

"In history, as in art, the man who tries to show everything shows nothing."*

“When you do his portrait, can you leave his braces off?”

”Well, I’m not an orthodontist. But I’ll do my best.”

The hard part is knowing what to put in.

"…the portraitist is tied by a stout rope to the social demands of his generation."*

*James Thomas Flexner, History of American Painting Volume One: First Flowers of Our Wilderness (The Colonia Period), Dover, N.Y., 1969, p. xviii:

If you get fewer than 2,000 rejections a year, you are not working hard enough.

©Ida Kotyuk, Portrait Painter, MA

www.portraits-oils.com

Ancient Mediterranean Art

Art (visual, literary, theater, song, music, sculpture, pottery, etc.) is each culture’s story teller of signed treaties, battles, as well as our beliefs and myths.

And, yet, I never had any interest in history. Because like children everywhere, I knew history started on my birthday. My experience with “history” in both high school and college, were names, dates, locations, and “this is important, because… .” I viewed history as only dates to be learned. Who cares about treaties of the past, battles of the past? Or, who cares about antiques? Or, who cares about [fill in the blank] history. Ho Hum… When I chose to become a painter, like driving into unknown territory, I existed from that day forward, not in yesterdays.

I held this conviction through to my Master’s degree. I suffered those art survey courses. Who cares which ones. Art students are familiar with the those quizzes, papers, mid-terms, and finals as we review 2,000 years of intellectual thought in three or four months. We memorize dates, names, and locations. Don’t misunderstand, I am always inspired viewing the original work of art; but dates, names, and locations, who cares? But, art students have to fulfill art history requirements.

One summer I had a choice. The kind of choice we look back on years later and think “OMG!”

Northern Illinois University (NIU) offered a number of diverse courses in various studies through the local two-year College of DuPage (COD). COD was 20-driving minutes away and NIU was an hour or more. I, thinking only of convenience, enrolled to learn about ancient Mediterranean art. My goal, after all, was to complete one more history requirement, and who really cares which history.

I had a passionate knowledgeable instructor. Our class was small and intimate. He brought heaps and volumes of copied paper for our required reading (books that were out of print and way before Amazon). How intimidating are those first days of any university class as we cover the course outline: quiz, quiz, quiz, paper, paper, paper, test, test, test; all by this time, and by that time. Hmmm… There goes my summer.

And so we got to work, and I learned this and I learned that. Our small group would read our papers in class. I was awed by the clever insightful mind of art history majors. I remember one paper to be an argumentative dialogue between space and volume as figures from mythology.

As the course drew on, we covered the Etruscans and Etruria, and I was sure they were a town somewhere in Egypt. I was seduced by and came to love those Etruscans. Especially when I discovered the Greeks were horrified to learn Etruscan women were permitted to participate in all areas of life that men participated. Women appeared at the games. Women got drunk at revelries. Women kicked up their heels; unlike demure, well-bred, Greek women.

[A digression: Etruscans were a shocking race well beyond Hedonism. Today, if you were to Google “Etruscan women” you will find many sites describing a hedonist culture that comes with sensitive and age-appropriate warnings. Though, one does not find such warnings under “Etruscan men.” It wasn’t what they did, but that the Etruscans did it all in public; not behind a column, not in a doorway, not in private, not surreptitiously, but in public. But I claim innocence during that summer.]

If you were to see an Etruscan sarcophagus, you will forever carry the memory. The wife, embraced by her husband, both sit upright, and have that “Etruscan” smile. To this day, I can recognize an Etruscan portrait. It’s that smile, you see. It is relaxed, contented, and satisfied.

My final paper was on Libya. Why? I was motivated by photographs of an archeological dig (suspended because of Libya’s changing attitudes toward everyone non-Libyan). My research uncovered before-and-after photographs of the dig. First, you see a lot of sand with one or two protruding pillars, then, you see the excavation. (I picture myself standing on that Libyan sand before, and kicking the pillar asking, “what’s THIS doing here?”) How could I not appreciate archeologists’ labor, working with a spoon or brush, to reveal that enormous slumbering city.

Unaware of my ancient Mediterranean immersion, a contemporary friend asked “what’s the date?” I didn’t know what year it was. Months after that summer, balancing my check book, I discovered all that summer’s written checks were dated 800 BC.

The Etruscans are gone now, wiped out by conquering Romans. Libyans still talk to no one. But, that Mediterranean art history course challenged and changed my attitude about the past; and the many ways to drill down to the daily lives of people. They had all become real. The “art” they left found a corner in my heart, and a drawer full of canceled checks misdated 800 BC. What a gift.

If you get fewer than 2,000 rejections a year, you are not working hard enough.

©Ida Kotyuk, Portrait Painter, MA

www.portraits-oils.com

Chicken With Its Head Cut Off

One day, many years ago, while still living in Chicago, I entered the offices of one more new dentist and one more new receptionist.. One of a series of new dentists and receptionists that I change every few years in the hope that if I change my tormentor the next torment will be gentle, each new experience a disappointment. I drew near what appeared to be a bullet-proof window and I wondered if dentists were under threat from some unknown radical clients, having heard that dentists (at that time) had the highest alcoholic and suicide rates. As I stood before that glass window the receptionist glanced down at her appointment book, then up at me, and asked for my name.

Ida Kotyuk, I tell her.

“God! I would kill for that name,” she said.

Puzzling and Odd…did she mean Ida or did she mean the family name Kotyuk?

My first memory that family names were relevant took place when we visited my uncles in Michigan.

Two events occurred—the first was my father walking into that Michigan living room, one brother following after another, then another, then another, six brothers in all; my uncles! I was stunned to see the family resemblance. If you do not grow up within a large extended family, you do not experience, and therefore are unaware of, physical family traits, dominant genes at work mirroring each other. As I looked at one uncle after another, I was hard pressed to single out my father. They all had the same height, coloring, and characteristics: swarthy, black haired, the same deep blue eyes. I grew up hearing I did not look like either parent and assumed my parents did not look like anyone else. But in that Michigan living room, at that moment, I understood why my small family puzzled as to how I did not resemble neither mother, nor father, nor brother.

The second remembered event of that day was the brothers’ discussion of our family name. Europeans understand that when your family name is Barbour or Barber your family were barbers. Americans understand that the spelling of family names have lost their importance because, as families came into this new American country to settle, Immigration would translate foreign sounding names into American phonetic letters. In those few moments on Ellis Island one or two strokes of a pen severed family connections; families losing the familiarity of their shared spellings.

In trying to understand what profession could a “Kotyuk” have been before immigration, the Michigan discussion went on for hours until one uncle finally admitted to investigating our family name. He admitted to researching and spending many hours and many dollars to learn what our name might mean. He knew that “tyuk” in Hungarian meant “hen” and he thought “kot” could be “to cut,” and as the family Kotyuk had been farmers, and like many farmers also raised chickens, he determined that Kotyuk meant chicken with its head cut off [which, for me, has led to a thousand dinner stories.]

I never objected to the name Kotyuk, I considered marriage would change that for me. But I disliked the name Ida; especially while growing up with other school children called Buffy, Suzie, or some other popular white-bread name. Ida Kotyuk sounds like a chemist, an astronomer, a scientist, a drudge; anything but a “portrait painter.”

But this dentist’s receptionist would “kill” for my name? “Why,” I ask?

She explains she is helping her brother, the dentist, but is a painter, a painter with the common white-bread name similar to Mary Smith. To standout from the Mary Smith crowd she signs her name Maryy Smith, Mary Smythe, M.Smith, mSmith, etc. You get the idea.

“When you sign your canvases, no one will confuse you with anyone else.”

She was and is right. One hundred years from today in some amended version of “The Antiques Road Show” two paintings will appear from the same period, one by Mary Smith and one by Ida Kotyuk. Mary Smith’s painting may be found to be of greater value; but Ida Kotyuk will be researched quickly. I realize that I am fortunate indeed; this strange family name suggesting chicken with its head cut off is as unique as the subjects of my portraits.

Who knew….

If you get fewer than 2,000 rejections a year, you are not working hard enough.

©Ida Kotyuk, Portrait Painter, MA

www.portraits-oils.com