About Rob Kaz

"Potent colors and engaging light are vessels I hope will bring you into the atmosphere of my paintings and leave your spirit wanting to stay. Quite simply, I want you to long to be in the painting, to take comfort and smile with a sense of whimsy, a sentiment in my paintings that can be contributed to my influential background in professional studio animation and video game art.

I approach each painting with a conscious sense of balance between earth and water - most of my paintings have water even if its existence is only implied. I find natural beauty and a soothing logic in water that meets land that I hope relates as emotions, even if not parallel to my own.

The signature is always the most complicated part of any painting because I find it extremely difficult to ever call a painting complete. But if you view my painting and find yourself there leaned against a palm on the shore while your mind authors a light rain or a curious butterfly taking flight, then I suppose a painting is never quite complete."

Following graduation from UCF, Rob began working for a number of small animation studios. Because Disney had recently relocated their animation studios to California and left many animators in Central Florida who chose not to uproot, Rob found himself working “along side quite possibly the most talented artists I've ever known right there in those small studios.” Their influence was invaluable.

While at the studios, Rob had the opportunity to work in many areas of film. In particular, the time he spent in character creation and environments heavily influenced his painting style.

For some time, Rob worked as a character artist for Electronic Arts (EA Tiburon in Maitland, Florida) creating human likenesses in sports games including Madden and NCAA football.

When Rob paints, He imagines places he’d rather be and he imagines friends along the way. Those two categories, 1) Places I’d Rather Be and 2) Friends Along the Way, occurred naturally as Rob began building a body of work. In most cases, his paintings easily fall into one or the other (and sometimes both).

When his last contract ended with EA, Rob took a leap of faith and began painting full time. Today, Rob’s work is a mirror of his background in animation and video game art.

Credits include art director on Tugger: The Jeep 4x4 Who Wanted to Fly and character artist on EA’s Madden 09, 10 and NCAA Football 10, 11.
Rob has an interest in World War II and won a first place award for his painting Good Landing which was inspired by stories of the Burma Hump in which American planes ferried supplies from India to China during WWII.
Though he adopted his dog Kira from the SPCA when she was a barely a year old, he is her fourth (and final) owner. Because he never got to see her as a puppy, the paintings Curisity and Bathtime are how he imagined she might have looked and played. A supporter of the SPCA, Rob donates artwork annually for SPCA fundraising galas.
Rob started surfing as a child when his family lived in New Jersey. “I never got good, I just liked doing it.” Though he still enjoys surfing, the waves of Central Florida don’t offer quite the same experience.
Rob was asked to paint a mural for his high school prom. The mural, applied to heavy-duty paper, was stolen from the gymnasium shortly after. He painted another mural for the Celebration middle school on a freestanding wall. Oddly enough, a month later, this mural was also stolen (the wall was dismantled and hauled off).
An encounter with a sea turtle while scuba diving in Hawaii resulted in the painting Traveler.