D. Edward Kucera
(American)
David Edward Kucera was born in San Jose, California in 1961. With an artist
nature that began very early, Kucera’s family was graced with his earliest works
on his bedroom walls and household encyclopedia. At the age of ten, his family
moved to Nebraska, where he completed school. It was in this quiet farming
community that he found art classes to be among his favorite studies.
In 1984, this highly creative individual chose to attend the Musician’s
Institute in Hollywood, California, where he studied for one year. Focusing on
the guitar as his instrument of choice, he toured in a road band for the
following year.
He met his wife, Paulette, in Rock Springs, Wyoming in 1986. By mutual
agreement, they took turns working to support each other’s education. They
married in 1988. The following year, Ed Kucera began his formal schooling at the
Colorado Institute of Art. In June of 1991, the artist graduated with honors.
Kucera’s attention to detail in landscape and color is a result of many hours
of fieldwork and study. His western subjects come alive with Kucera’s brilliant
color and sense of light. He loves painting Indians, featuring women and
children. His models are dancers from the Ojibwa, Lakota, Blackfoot and other
Great Lakes and Plain Indian Nations, who travel the powwow circuit competing in
traditional and fancy dances. Kucera documents them in full costume, working as
much as possible from life as well as photographs. He captures the dignity,
grace, and poise of his subjects and intricate details of dress. His realistic
classicism owes much to his study of Caravaggio and to his enormous
self-discipline. The detail is tight where Ed wants the focus, and loose in the
background into almost abstract.
Ed Kucera has participated in many invitation only shows and is highly
collected throughout the United States.
