July 2009

A native of Charlotte, N.C., Mitch Kolbe, 54, lives in Palm Harbor. In 1973 he moved to New York City to study with Robert Brackman, Robert Schultz, Jack Faragasso, Frank Liljegren and John H. Sanden at the Art Students League as a scholarship award student. He also studied privately with Lou DeDonato at the Salmagundi Club. In 1977 Kolbe studied photography at Queens College in Charlotte and held his first one-man exhibition of paintings at the Robinet Art Gallery there. That was the same year that he first visited and exhibited in Florida,  at Tarpon Springs.

He has worked as a commercial artist, graphics printer, muralist and sculptor while pursuing his fine-art painting. In Atlanta he worked on the restoration of the Atlanta Cyclorama. Also in Atlanta he produced 90 life-size sculpted heads of children from around the world for the 1996 Summer Olympic Games. At Kennedy Space Center, he completed a series of realistic murals depicting natural Florida.

In 1990, Kolbe decided to make Tarpon Springs his primary residence and moved into the studio that once belonged to the famous American landscape painter, George Inness Jr. For seven years Kolbe’s tight, realistic style continued to evolve. His scenic works, which have a classical feel, were starting to mature into a looser impressionistic look, rich in color and immediately appealing. His strongest ties are to the pre-modernist painters, who began portraying Florida more than a century ago. This approach is still one of the most powerful in conveying the distinctive qualities of the landscape. While at Inness Manor he started painting landscapes representing the central west coast region of Florida, and he completed his first life-size bronze of a youth retrieving the cross of Epiphany for the Greek Orthodox Church. Many private commissions soon followed, including portrait commissions and murals.

In 1997 Kolbe moved from Inness Manor into his present studio at 123 E. Court St., Tarpon Springs, to open M.L. Kolbe Art Studio and Gallery. From 1997 to the present, other major works include six 10-by-10-foot murals for the Portofino Bay Hotel, Universal Studios, depicting fantasy underwater scenes. Another mural, measuring 3 feet by 125 feet depicting a Tuscany panorama, is also in the Portofino Bay Hotel. He painted a 51/2-foot-by-10-foot mural of the Chassahowitzka River for the Celebration Hotel lobby.

Who influences and inspires you? The artists I admire are varied and from many countries and ages; however, I am most interested in the realist artists, such as Rembrandt, Goya, Sorrola, Degas and Inness. For years I have been influenced by the Russian painters of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Kramskoy’s portrait of Shishkin is one of the finest I have ever seen. George Inness probably had the biggest influence on my landscape style, and Sorrola and Repin on my figurative. As for inspiration, I usually don’t think about it. It usually finds me. I believe inspiration comes to each of us based on the cumulative effects of each of our own life experiences. Inspiration is very Zen. It comes to you without thinking about it … if you do think about it, it vanishes.

When and where do you work? Generally I like to get in six to seven productive hours a day. It’s never the same day to day, and this is one reason I like being an artist – I don’t punch a time clock. When I’m in a controlled environment such as the studio, I tend to work between 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. but it could be 5 a.m. to 10 p.m. When I’m outdoors painting, I usually paint at sunrise, rest around noon when the light is the most boring, and then paint again late afternoon. I usually split my time 50/50 painting outdoors and in the studio. I have had many different studios over the years, currently I paint out of my converted garage at home.

What are your favorite subjects? The simple answer is probably the human figure and landscapes, but my favorite subject is generally anything that depicts certain interesting light effects or colors or mood. This is why Monet could paint something as arcane as a haystack: It was not the subject itself, but the colors that each time of the day presented to his exquisite eye.

How do you describe your style? I describe my work as realism and my style as varied somewhere between impressionism and tonalism, all within range of realism.

What mediums do you use? Mostly I paint in oils because of its versatility, but I also enjoy pencil, watercolor, opaque gouache. I also like to sculpt in clay.

Web site: Presently under construction. E-mail at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it   See some of Kolbe’s work at www.kesslercollection.com