Kyle Krauskopf is an artist, a vagabond, an adventurer, a deep-thinking ball of emotions from Peru, Indiana currently living in Seattle, Washington.
“What I want to say to you is- you matter, and you are not alone. We’re here for each other. We can get through this together.” Kyle believes there is a place for you and there are healthy forms of expression and escape and says art is a great place to start.
“Small Drawings High Hopes came at a time where I needed to focus,” said Kyle. Every day in 2019, Kyle completed a new six-inch-square drawing. The pieces used watercolor, acrylic paint, marker, paint pens, and colored pencils to illustrate a year of change, inspiration, challenges, and joy.
With this project, 30% of all sales are donated to The National Alliance on Mental Illness.
“If nothing else changed over the course of the year, at least I could count on myself to create 365 new pieces of artwork by its end.”
More about Kyle:
Lightning wielding, multi-disciplined artist Kyle Krauskopf creates without restraint. Given to grandiose and effort-intensive ideas Kyle most recently completed a year-long drawing challenge in which he created a unique, mixed-media work, each day for a year.
He subscribes to the idea that to better your practice and make way for breakthroughs, sheer volume of work is required. He is also helping with the project of building the new Museum of Museums and Co-Founded the Atlantis Artist Collective, both in Seattle, WA. He’s a frequent collaborator with the National Alliance on Mental Illness and seeks to help others- with an eye toward those in need, an ear for anyone who might need one, and hands always busy creating.
View more projects and pieces for sale on Kyle’s website: kylekrauskopf.com and follow him on Instagram @kylekrauskopf.
More about Small Drawings High Hopes:
"All my life I have felt out of place. It started with being a chubby little kid with glasses and a bowl-cut who was into superheroes and star wars- consequently being made fun of for all of these. Saying I sought to “fit in” would be an overstep, I think what I really did was seek to stand out. My first foray into this was when I decided I did not want to be fat. I self-imposed a diet and exercise routine, and just as I was feeling good in my body, confident to communicate with other humans in hopes they weren’t silently judging me, puberty hit and I was struck with face-scarring acne. Having zero confidence throughout high school, such a formative time for everyone, I retreated into my mind. I sought to excel in art.
As I went onto college I did little else except focus on becoming the best artist I could. Yet again, after graduation, after working so hard toward something, a bigger and different problem presented itself- there is no job market for a kid with a studio degree in drawing. As my friends got jobs and went on trips and began to build homes and families I built an art gallery. The greatest joy of which was extending the opportunity for my fellow artists to show their work. To help them. After a year I still felt this wasn’t the right thing, this wasn’t “it.”
From that studio in Indianapolis Indiana I have gone on to live in Seattle, help build a brewery, run marathons, climb mountains, backpack through Europe with my best friend, build an art gallery and studio in Pike Place Market, become a collected artist of The Getty Museum in Los Angeles, and most recently manifest a dream project which I thought was wildly unrealistic and wholly out of me reach. I’m not ashamed to admit that all of these seemingly accomplished things are just a little kid trying to figure out where he fits into this world. For every high achievement, there has been an equal low. Poverty, heartbreak, anxiety, failure, depression, these are no strangers to me. The one thing I have always been dependent on through it all is art. I have found ways to take my art to the tops of those mountains, to see me through that heartbreak, to help me through times with no discernible direction. My most recent project Small Drawings High Hopes is no exception.
The project was conceived of in one of my most aimless times. When I felt nothing was in my control. Through it, I traveled a path that has led me here. All of these adventures, all of these highs and lows, perceived triumphs and failures have led me right here. With a desire to reach out to others to let them know I understand how you can feel trapped in your mind. It's where everything goes on. That I understand the pain and fear and doubt that can so easily creep in.
Meet & Greet Gallery Photos