By Danielle Nyland
As a child, Zakk Ziegler was always drawn to art. He spent a lot of time watching his grandmother paint Bob Ross-style with oil paints; at age 7, Zakk made the jump and created his first painting – which he still has. “Watching her paint, seeing her mix and blend paints, it made me happy,” Zakk shares. “I loved being able to take paint and produce something very cool.”
Southwestern Pennsylvania has always been home for Zakk. He grew up in the area and has lived here his entire life. He attended college in California, Pa for journalism, but eventually moved back to Waynesburg as a full-time artist.
Zakk, who is self-taught, works almost exclusively in oils and as a portrait painter. He creates his paintings freehand, with no sketches, and with loose brush strokes. Each painting receives about 50 hours worth of labor before it is complete. His vibrantly-colored work is a balance of impressionism and realism, veering more towards realism. “I spend a lot of time trying to bring out the details in skin because there’s so much more tones and detail in skin than people realize.”
The majority of Zakk’s artistic endeavors are in the Pittsburgh area. He’s involved with Art in the Garden, a program that engages youth in urban gardens in active, structured, and supportive ways, and Redfishbowl, a grassroots artist collective. He also participates in a lot of pop-up art shows, art crawls, and local shows.
A few years ago, the right connection brought an opportunity for Zakk to work with the youth of Greene County. Through Anne Bargerstock , a friend of Zakk’s for years, he reconnected with Traci Sokol at the Greene County Department of Parks & Recreation. He had previously worked with Traci when he served as a day camp counselor for the county in 2009. Working together, they produced a children’s painting class with Zakk as the teacher; the Department of Recreation supplied the location and assisted with advertising and promotion.
The children’s classes (age 5 to 10) are generally an hour long and are crafted to accommodate children beginning to express an active interest in the arts. The students learn color theory, color mixing, basic techniques and concepts, and complete full paintings with acrylic paints. The older youth and adult classes (ages 11+) cover the same topics, but last two hours, and are more in depth. “The adult class is denser coursework, covering a lot of knowledge,” Zakk says. “It’s everything that I wish I had learned when I was first starting out.”
The students work with a limited palette and have to mix colors to get a bigger variety. “A lot of the students are shocked when they get to class and see the palette doesn’t even have black,” Zakk laughs. “But it helps them learn more about color and allows them to match the colors in front of them. I try not to get too far into the crazier parts of color theory and focus more on composition, recognizing values, and how dimension reflects light.”
Most of the compositions in the class are simple still lifes. Zakk avoids using extremely complex arrangements, like flowers, in the classes, although sometimes he will challenge the students with a more difficult composition to help them grow as painters and learn something new.
The classes break down a large subject into smaller components so that by the end of class, students can start a painting and see it through to the finish. “It helps the students to view the compositions and the painting as a group of small individual problems to solve. It makes more sense for them.”
The painting classes have been held four times and have been success. “We had a lot of repeat [child] students.” Zakk adds, “I try to encourage them to the maximum degree and these kids produce some wonderful work in the short time that they are painting. They latch on so readily, even quicker than the adults. It just clicks for them.”
Zakk hopes to get enough support to create a free art program for area youth during the upcoming spring break. “I’d love to get a non-profit, free program started where kids could come and make art,” Zakk says. “I know its can be hard to get even $10 together for an art class for some people.” Sometime after the free program, Zakk will hold another session of painting classes for both children and adults.
Zakk is currently working on a large-scale community project that will take him the better part of a year to complete. Using a disposable film camera, Zakk is challenging 27 people to capture an image of something meaningful to them. The people will come from a wide sample of the population – students, hairdressers, professors, business owners, children, etc. Zakk will take each of these photos and create a full multimedia experience; a painting will be created from each photo, accompanied by music.
Once the project has been completed, Zakk plans to rent out one of the business fronts in downtown Waynesburg for a show. Attendees will be able to scan a QR code at each painting that will play music from the supplementary playlist. “It’s a big project that will require a lot of time management but the use of both audio and visual will convey a mood for each painting,” Zakk says about the project. He adds, “If you look deep enough, you might see something more.“
To see more of Zakk’s art, visit his instagram page @porco.dio.art.
