Drew Geoffrey Kopf

ART: I chose theater as a major focus of my life, having pursued and earned a Master of Fine Arts Degree in Theater Directing, largely because I felt theater was the art that encompassed all of the other arts. Self-expression is the underlying goal of almost everything I enjoy doing. The arts offer me a chance to investigate my inner feelings and to share them with others, which I find to be extremely satisfying. One of the things I enjoy doing is to take something that is considered mundane or insignificant, and using it to craft a piece of art that may bring some kind of pleasure to someone or to make them reflect in some way about life and where they fit in. My father and I once took a piece of a wooden crate and made it into a Jewish Star, which I still have and which gives me a certain amount of pleasure each time I notice it.

Painting: I visited Paris a few years ago where I enjoyed the wonderful museums. The paintings I saw served as an inspiration to me. I used to draw and paint as a youngster and often resorted to sketching out what I thought the set for a show I was directing should look like so my designers could incorporate my expectations into their efforts. So, I was not completely strange to working with colors and shapes when, upon my return home from France, that I decided to use the graphic arts as way to provide myself with some of the good feeling I used to get from working in the theatre. But, I realized the results of my efforts using pictures to express myself were going to be rather primitive since my familiarity with the various brushes, paints and painting surfaces was very limited. I hoped that in time I would develop control of these elements and gain a certain level of technique to allow my feeling about my subjects to come through. In September of 2006, I tried my hand at portrait painting in an 8 session course with Victoria Carlin at the Art League of Long Island in Huntington, NY. I continued through the Spring in another 8 session series. I saw that the need for basic skills was a must and was privilaged to be able to study with Attila Hejja during the Summer of 2007 at the Stevenson Academy of Fine Arts in Oyster Bay, NY., before his untimely death in late August. In the fall of 2007, I took another 8 session series in portaiture with Victoria Carlin followed by the Intermediate level of the beginners series with a focus on portraiture at the Stevenson Academy of Fine Arts. Since then, I have been painting on my own.

Spero Maucoleum

Antiques

Toll-Free Phone: (800)839-2929

Toll-Free Fax: (888)329-6287