Sam Karres

Sam Karres (June 17, 1929 - ) is a painter of watercolors and oils living in Sterling Heights, Michigan. During his childhood in the city of Wyandotte, Michigan, Sam Karres began drawing from newspapers, making copies of Flash Gordon and the other comic strips of Alex Raymond. His family subscribed to the Detroit Times and The American Weekly.
Sam Karres received his education in fine arts at his high school in Wyandotte, Michigan as well as at Wayne State University. During Karres' enrollment at Wayne State, Wayne Claxton served as department chair of the Wayne State art school. Claxton insisted that instructors abstain from demonstrating art technique to the students. He wanted the impressionable students to flounder into their style and technique, not duplicate the methods shown by an instructor. Sam Karres frequently contributed to Wayne State's literary and arts magazine, Panorama, and soon became its art editor. When Karres graduated from Wayne with a Masters degree, Claxton did not retain Karres as an art instructor.
Karres landed an illustrators position at General Motors, working with Harley Earl on the Cadillac Eldorado. The design department was located on Milwaukee Boulevard, across the street from the main General Motors Building. Harley Earl often visited to lecture his illustrators: "You can design a beautiful car, but people won't buy it." "How's that El Doe Ray Doe coming?", Earl asked Karres in the mornings. Despite conversations with Earl, the position was short lived, and after 6 months on the job, Karres and his department of illustrators were out of a job.
From his art student days onward, Karres earned part of his living from selling his paintings and he was exhibited by the AAA Gallery, located on Grand River Boulevard in Detroit. He also sold his work himself, his paintings selling quickly to art instructors or acquaintances who saw his work. Yet, In 1955, a friend sent him to Ford Motor Company for an interview. Using his contributions to Panorama as his portfolio, Karres landed an opportunity to interview. After successfully drawing a stapler as a test of his illustration skills, Karres began a 25 year career in illustration, retiring from the automaker in 1980.
Sam Karres has won the annual gold medal award at the Historic Scarab Club in Detroit, Michigan. He won it first in 1977 for a painting of a chamber music performance. He won it again in 2004 for a painting of motorcyclists in Elizabeth Park, Trenton, Michigan.
Karres has maintained a studio in Royal Oak, Michigan at 206 West 6th Street, but he prefers to paint and sketch in the field, often on street corners in Detroit, Michigan that he has sketched numerous times over six decades. Twenty times he has painted oils and watercolors of Ste. Anne de Detroit Roman Catholic Church in Mexicantown. Many of the neighborhoods and buildings depicted by Karres no longer exist, as is the case of Detroit's Hastings Street business district.
Sam Karres is the subject of a biography by James F. Bloch. Entitled Sam Karres - Urban Expressionist, the coffee-table book includes color plates of Karres' work.
Official Sam Karres Website Karres Gallery

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