FOLK ART PAINTINGS BY GARY KOTT

When I was working in Hollywood I bought a get-away home in Southampton, New York. It was a nice house with a beautiful view of a farm field and dozens of empty walls begging for artwork, of which I owned none. I began scouring the New York art galleries and finally found a piece in Soho that grabbed my interest -- a large black and red color field with a price tag of, gulp, $38,000. Doing some quick calculations I figured I’d have to work nine more seasons of TV shows to fill up two rooms of my new house. On move-in day I was disappointed to find that the previous owner had failed to clear out a large stack of plywood in the basement -- my first chore would be hauling huge sheets of junk upstairs and out to the garbage. As I began to haul, my mind’s eye realized that these sheets of plywood, four feet by eight feet, were the same size as the painting I liked in Soho. Hmm, I thought, two colors, how hard could that be?

I hopped in my car and drove to an art store -- who knows, maybe it was the same store that supplied local artists Willem de Kooning and Roy Lichtenstein. I bought two tubes of acrylic, one paintbrush, and a pencil and paid the bill of $9.87. Back in the basement I laid out one sheet of plywood on the floor, drew a rectangular shape, and began to fill in the center with red. The phone rang -- it was a friend of mine from Los Angeles, “Hey, Gary, what are you doing?” “Painting a picture.”  “You?”  “Me -- wait -- I’m almost done -- there, finished.” I stepped back to examine my two-color work of art -- it seemed very close to what I’d seen in the gallery in Soho. My friend asked, “How’s it look?” I said, “Who cares -- I just saved $37,990.13.”

Thus began a pursuit that progressed through the years from a wall-filling sideline to a relaxing pastime that offset the crazy pressures of my Hollywood writing and producing career. I’ve tried to price the paintings fairly, however, to save money do what I once did -- simply go down to the local art store, buy a bunch of supplies, return home, and brush away.