Artists to Know

Renaissance Man
There aren’t too many Hamptons real estate professionals (if any) who can claim to be both a working artist and have an entry on Internet Movie Data Base (IMDb.) After pursuing an acting career in New York, Joseph De Sane moved to the South Fork where the thespian switched to a career in real estate, a move that has led to his current position as a manager at Compass. More on his IMDB credits later.

Real estate enabled him to support his three kids and return to painting, a calling he’d left behind after graduating from the Long Island University Southampton Campus with a Bachelor of Fine Arts many years before. De Sane’s large abstract paintings reflect his penchant for the “raw and heavily textured.” The more a work is “gritty or imperfect – not perfectly formed and shaped,” the more it appeals to his aesthetic. “There’s something about art that allows itself to make mistakes,” says the artist who uses brushes from the hardware store to work professional quality oil paints. “You’ll see all kinds of bristles lost in my work.” He also employs a palette knife or ragged pieces of metal to scratch the surface. “Clean lines are not for me.”

Yet he’s always had an eye for the decorative, a word he admits is “dangerous.” He layers his canvases with many colors, starting with a dark gesso primer and adding white and other colors that he scratches through to reveal heavily textured geometric shapes – circles or squares.
As for that film career, De Sane wrote, directed and acted in Mulligan Farm, a movie that was shot in the old Halsey farmhouse in Water Mill (since demolished). He has also found an abundance of “meaty roles” on the boards at Guild Hall and other local venues. With his art pieces being gobbled up by collectors, De Sane doesn’t need to act the part of a Renaissance man.

Powerful Forms
After studying fine art at Cooper Union, Steven Kinder got swallowed up in the secure world of high finance, where he used his talents to head marketing and sales for a Wall Street investment firm. But even while promoting the benefits of stocks and bonds, the artist-at-heart worked on plaster molds in his office. His coworkers became so used to seeing his artsy projects that “no one flinched.”
His artistic muse flourished during those wilderness years. While renovating bungalows in Noyac, he got his hands dirty with clay, creating a series of “rocks” the size of bowling balls and firing them in his own kilns “till they cracked.” He welded for a while. And he manufactured his own tiles – with images of local flora such as oak leaves and acorns – to line the bathroom and kitchen surfaces of his renovation projects.

Three years ago Kinder picked up where he’d left off decades before and since then has executed hundreds of paintings on canvas and paper. He works both in a Water Mill studio and in a working Williamsburg factory loft where he’s begun to have studio visits from curators.

While he had painted family portraits at school, his content has evolved into bold abstract works, featuring original color combinations. “I like the language of colors speaking to each other,” he says. “Just putting them next to each other, without even shapes, they can be soothing or angry.”
He approached his latest oeuvre by first creating what he calls “icons–powerful forms” with impact such as circles, drips and bulls’ eyes. Their role is to “suck the viewer in.”

“I believe art has to entertain,” he says. “I create performances for viewers to participate in. It’s not always about pleasure, it evokes emotion. There needs to be an exchange.”

Storytelling
You might have seen Carol Saxe’s work on a poster, perhaps one of her paintings of dogs on the beach – wearing sunglasses, sitting on deck chairs, surfing. Or perhaps you’ve even purchased one of her prints of Main Beach or a lifeguard chair in Montauk. Those were for sale at the now defunct bookstore in East Hampton and the new owner has expressed interest in carrying them again.
Despite an abstract phase in her early career, her “heart and soul” is in representational work, which she executes in acrylics. (She’s allergic to oils, literally not figuratively.) Saxe prefers expressing a narrative, and has many stories to tell. From beach-y scenes to boats quietly moored, most of her paintings incorporate water. On her studio wall hangs a painting of a crashing wave so true to life you feel you could get wet.

In the past she focused on architecture, capturing the essence of Manhattan townhouses and French cafés. Her local renderings include spot on paintings of such iconic locale as the American Hotel, The Lobster Roll and Guild Hall. These days she’s doing a lot of windows framed by filmy curtains blowing in the breeze. All overlook water including four she did of Billy Joel’s former Sagaponack oceanfront house.

“My work is trending more minimal,” says the Springs artist, holding up a sail boat moored on the calm glassy surface of Three Mile Harbor, its mirror-like reflection the only other shape on the canvas besides water and sky.

The award-winning painter is looking for local representation though she is shown in a handful of galleries from Maine to Jamesport on the North Fork. A gallery on Fisher’s Island helps her land many commissions – of scenic views, country clubs, boats – which she transports to the island by catching a ride in a friend’s plane.

Meanwhile, she’s irked by Chinese companies that are blatantly pirating her works and selling them as “original Carol Saxes.” She gets no royalties, but isn’t imitation the sincerest form of flattery?