"Born in New York City, the son of a Czech architect and Viennese writer, Gary Komarin has been called a “painter’s painter, which may sound like a cliché until one contemplates how few contemporary artists fit that description today. His status in this regard is based on the authenticity of his work, its deep connection to the tradition of Modern painting as well as its sustained individuality as an utterly personal voice. Looking at a work by Komarin is like a freewheeling survey through the last fifty years of American painting history.

Like many of the best artists of his generation he is indebted to the New York School, especially his mentor Philip Guston with whom he studied at Boston University, as well as Matisse before them. But Komarin has been particularly successful at filtering this influence though his own potent iconography.

Komarin eschews traditional painting media and materials preferring non-art industrial canvas tarps and drop cloths. He builds layered surfaces with latex house paint in a thinned out sluice mixed with spackle and water. The house paint offers hybrid colors that seem slightly off and the spackle creates a beautiful matte surface. Guston’s influence is evident in Komarin’s mergence of drawing and painting often breaking the picture plane of his rich and elegantly composed color fields with an assortment of private iconic cake and vessel like objects that remain just this side of identification."     courtesy Kim Eagles-Smith

Komarin has exhibited extensively throughout the United States, Europe and Asia. In 1996 Komarin’s work was included in a pivotal exhibition at 41 Greene Street in New York City, along with the art of Jean-Michel Basquiat, Philip Guston and Bill Traylor. In 1999 Komarin received the Joan Mitchell Prize in Painting from the Elizabeth Foundation. He received the Benjamin Altman Prize at the National Academy of Design Museum, New York, in 2002 and a grant from the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts in 1999. Articles and reviews of Komarin have appeared in the New York Times and in leading art magazines including Art in America and Arts Magazine. His work may be found in many noted public collections including the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; the Montclair Art Museum, New Jersey; the Microsoft Corporation, Seattle; and the Hyatt Corporation.

Komarin lives in the wooded Connecticut hills near New York, where he keeps a house and studio.