Ira a. Kaufman was born in Brooklyn ny in 1942. i started to draw at a very early age. I can't recall being encouraged to or discouraged from this. I just did. it just was. of course in school I became one of those kids who can draw which led to several funny stories. in 5th grade Mrs. prince asked the class to do an abstract with quash paints. the paints they gave kids in the early 50's in the ny public school system stunk pretty bad. I guess it was gum Arabic with pigment. it was continually opened and closed and stunk. anyone who was there in those years knows what I am saying. to get back to the point more or less i was familiar with the concept of abstract and painted what I thought to be a free colour exercise. when the teacher looked at the finished works she hit the ceiling when she saw my painting. i was ordered out of the room and told to wait in the hall this being a sort of punishment in itself. the assistant princible was called and i was cross examined on why I had made this filthy picture. i was confronted with the picture and tried to understand what they were talking about. my clear memory is that I could not figure out what in the hell was going on. this is a true story and with all respect to Kafka. it happens. i sure would like to see that picture today to see what came out of an eleven year olds psyche to excite these nice folks to such a degree. i suppose they thought I was waving my artistic middle finger at them. I was no where near such intellectual development to conceive of an intentional joke nor do I do political satire even today. at the age of fourteen i received lessons from my aunt Ann who is a fairly accomplished Sunday painter and started to paint in oils. I attend the school of visual arts in 1958 and studied with Francis Criss, Byrn Hogarth and Gabore, I am a slow man and my artistic sensibilities opened slowly. and this is a process of going nowhere but knowing the not knowing. At this point i bummed around for a while, i was a member of the brata gallery from 1964. the brata was one of the 10^th street gallery groups. there i had my first one man show and continued to show yearly for the next five years. i participated in many group shows at the galleries which were active at the time including prince street gallery phoenix, alan stone, East Hampton, and others, i moved to Israel in 1970. and had shows in Jerusalem and Tel-Aviv, in 1996 i was invited to show in Tokyo at the Monten house. i live at present in Brooklyn NY.I am presently trying to locate and photograph pictures, i can find in various collections to make my website a concise history of my artwork.

kaufy