Joe Kotas is a Chicago-area painter originally from Buffalo, New York. A former engineer, he once conducted nuclear pipe stress analysis, but after teaching himself to paint, left that job to become an artist.

Kotas was a founding member of the anarchist art movement known as Tapeworm; the group staged “happenings” and performances in New York City in the 1980s and risk and humor are important elements of his work to this day. Action has always played a dominant role in the development of Joe’s artist’s oeuvre and the influence of alternative art forms and mediums can be seen in Joe’s willingness to destroy in order to create. He prefers to staple canvas directly to the floor in order to adequately distress his surfaces. Getting paint to do unusual things by throwing, scraping or generally battering the materials is what he strives for. Joe uses liquid paints in squeeze bottles, and he developed a revolutionary new paint application method known as “Pendulum Painting.”