Aaron Kraten

Early life

Aaron Kraten was born March 15, 1974, in San Francisco, California. As a child, he moved to Huntington Beach in Southern California. As a teenager, Aaron was very interested in skateboarding and counter culture. After high school, he worked full-time jobs while establishing himself as an artist, taking jobs in factories and working a stint as a courier. He gained recognition in the early 2000s, and subsequently set up a studio in a Costa Mesa loft on the East side.

Work

Kraten is a mixed media artist, using found objects such as refrigerator doors and discarded windows to dismantled doghouses and old street signs as well as using nontraditional paint media such as correction fluid. He prefers to use his hands to work directly with the paint, giving a textured quality to the work; it is intriguing to note that brushes are never used in any of his pieces. Aaron is a self-taught artist.

One of his best known paintings is Workers Compensation 2003, which depicts a table found in the trash. It was entirely fingerpainted.

History

Kraten grew up in Huntington Beach, California and spent many of his formative years drawing in 100-page sketchbooks, a practice he continues to this day. In 1999, while Kraten was working as a Vespa motorcycle mechanic, he experimented with painting on found objects. Kraten's first sales emerged after starting to display work in the thrift store, Stateside, at The Lab Anti-Mall where he was employed at the time, and sold a fair amount of it.

Soon after, Kraten began submitting his work to galleries and museums in Southern California. Kraten's work has been shown in museums such as the Laguna Art Museum; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; and galleries such as Gallery 23; Gallery C; Seven Degrees; and Subject Matter. Kraten shows about four times a year and posts new work on his website often. Kraten has filled over 58 100-page sketchbooks and created over 350 paintings. He currently paints full-time.

Past exhibitions

Published works