About the Artist
Saul Krotki was a scientist before he was a painter. He describes himself as an “old-world naturalist,” a collector of specimens. His first love? Mineralogy, a science not so different from art. “It’s the responsibility of an artist to show people things that they’ve overlooked,” he says. “When you’re looking at a mineral in a binocular microscope, you’re always finding examples of the wonders of nature. Wonders that are easily overlooked.”
Mineralogy was in his blood. “A true case of epigenetics,” Krotki says. While he grew up in the Bronx, his grandparents had helped found a mining town in Utah. “My uncles, my grandfather, they worked 300 feet underground in the silver mine,” he says. But this family history was hidden from Krotki by his mother, who worried that he, too, would make a career in the mines. “She wanted me to be a rabbi,” he says. “The fact that I noticed highway construction around New York City and brought home rocks was considered a counterproductive thing to do.”
Krotki served a brief stint in the U.S. Army Signal Corps, stationed in Taiwan in the early 1960s. He filled the time by learning Chinese martial arts and tai chi, a practice he continued to study for 50 years, even translating tai chi texts.
Upon returning to the U.S., he went back to his boyhood passion. He studied mineralogy at the University of Utah and, as an undergraduate, became a National Science Foundation Scholar at the Smithsonian. It was, unexpectedly, during this time that his interest in art was piqued.
“There I am, a scientist at the Smithsonian, and I see this department where they’re making silk screens for dioramas. I was so astounded by their skills that it just turned me to the fine arts,” he says. “So while I was there studying mineral crystallography, that’s when I did my first drawings.” He went on to earn an MFA in painting from The State University of New York and later established his own art school and gallery in Salt Lake City.
In 1990, Krotki was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes during a routine physical. It took him by surprise, given his active lifestyle, but he did not let it slow him down. In the wake of this diagnosis, he’s undertaken more mineralogical expeditions than ever, conducting 75 excursions in the area of Washington Pass in the North Cascades mountains.
Krotki has been a member of the New York Mineralogical Club since 1956. He is now the oldest continuous member of the club, which regularly publishes Saul’s articles.
On the Cover: The Blue Berry
While minerals have remained an artistic focus throughout his career, Krotki is also interested in the interconnection between crystallography and botanicals. “It’s fascinating to me that I can place a photograph of a crystal next to a photograph of a flower and see a proportional relationship of growth,” he says.
At 82, Krotki finds subjects closer to home, listening to blues records by Robert Johnson, Scrapper Blackwell, and Skip James as he works. The Blue Berry, an acrylic on wood panel, was painted in his wife’s garden at their home in Seattle.
In addition to painting and micromount photography, Krotki currently experiments with word-prompt (artificial intelligence) digital images.
“As they get older, artists often repeat what they’re comfortable with. Nothing changes. I always want my artistic statement to reach deeper into my own personal poetry,” he says. “‘Nice start, what’s next,’ I always say.”
