Meet the Artist:
Donna McVicar Kazo
The work you see in these galleries comes from a lifetime of keen observation, of soaking up beauty like a sponge. I can state that my need to draw began at age four when I first encountered horses and had to express my love with crayons and paper. I also was pretty sure if I drew enough horses, I would be able to manifest one in our back yard (didn’t happen). Later I learned that if you could draw a horse, you could draw anything! So at age twenty, it seemed natural to begin selling highly detailed portraits of animals in pastel, commissioned by their owners or, secretly, by a family member or friend of the owner. It quickly became apparent that I had the gift of really capturing the animal’s resemblance and, I was told, even its soul. Drawing and painting an animal, or anything the artist sees, I realized, confers a sort of ownership of the subject. The eye caresses, the heart retains, the hand expresses.
Above: Donna Kazo with daughters Jamie and Christianna on Biscayne Bay, photo by Dr. Tom Kazo.
Below: pastel portraits by Donna Kazo of Flora, Martina, and Princess Lexi
And in the ensuing decades, my eye has caressed and my hand has brought forth a pleasant variety of subjects, not “just” animals. From 1991-2000, I was Art Director and Associate Editor of Tropical Fruit News Magazine for the Rare Fruit Council International, headquartered in Miami, Florida. I was in charge of editing and illustrating 100 consecutive monthly issues that were well-received in many countries by lovers and growers of rare and delicious fruit. Sometimes the fruits within our pages would be so rare that very few photos existed of them; so my job was to pick up my trusty pen and come up with a detailed line drawing (the sample here is called “Jakfruit-O-Lantern” for an October issue). I learned that drawing in pen and ink helped to balance my painterly pastels. A thin black line had to accurately describe such characteristics as depth, texture and character. When I’ve been called upon to draw aircraft for my late father’s books on his long career in the Golden Age of Aviation, pen and ink has also handled the job well.
My pastel paintings, no matter the subject, always begin with broad swaths of pigment and gradually tighten as they become more detailed. An almost photographic result pleased both me and my animal portrait clients. Pastel is the driest of mediums and does a superb job of holding the finest detail. But after the premature birth and subsequent illness of my second daughter in 1986, I stepped away from portraiture, and even art, for awhile to recuperate from nearly losing her.
I was able to heal myself and move forward thanks to Georgia O’Keeffe‘s paintings. I was fascinated by her deceptively simple images of seashells and of skulls where you could look through the openings. So, mostly painting at night when my young daughters were asleep, I eventually brought forth 88 “Shell Fragments” in several media. A major inspiration was Pink Floyd‘s album, A Momentary Lapse of Reason which I always played during my studio sessions. With David Gilmour‘s guitar supplying the power, I painted my favorite wave-sculpted, broken seashells over and over, learning so much about abstraction and the many colors in white, each night. I made these paintings as simple as possible because of the complexity of my life…they were the only thing under my control.
My Shell Fragment pastel “Above the Planet” named for a part of a lyric in Pink Floyd’s “Learning to Fly”
Yet from the beginning of my professional career, I have wanted to express my unique perspective. I began to feel a need to get away from mere representation, to create paintings that aren’t mistaken for photographs. To take it to extremes, I even wanted to create paintings that look only like themselves. Some people might label such works as “abstract” or “modern art” but what I sought was my own methodology for revealing the essence of my experiences and visions. Over the years I had played with watercolor, alkyd/oils and acrylics, and found each medium useful for different projects. Like many artists, I found working in one medium would help me with the others. I found much inspiration in the Griffin & Sabine series by Nick Bantock. There was a mysterious undercurrent to his artful illustrations for those wondrous books that I yearned to tap into. But then it was even more frustrating, because I still couldn’t quite put my finger on it, that “thing” I wanted to express.
“Trep, My Golden Hero” Donna’s ink portrait of the “World’s Greatest Police Dog,” according to many editions of the Guinness Book of Records, beginning in 1978, owned and trained by Tom Kazo.
Donna wading in a tidal creek through the mangrove forest as Project Manager of Wildlife Research Team’s NOAA-funded habitat restoration project of Matheson Hammock/R. Hardy Matheson Preserve, Coral Gables, Florida.
One great impetus was the book, Seven Life Lessons of Chaos. It gave me, especially, insight into fractals. That changed everything for me. My motto became, “Embrace Chaos.” But it still took quite a few years to bring me to the paintings which are presented to you on this website. Life threw quite a few hardballs at me that I had to field.
Every morning (well, almost!) since May 1, 1999, I have been writing “Morning Pages” as suggested by Julia Cameron in The Artist’s Way. That gave me a safe place to fantasize about my search to paint differently. A few years ago, my Pages began to reveal to me that instead of dry, tight strokes, I could live more dangerously and pour the pigments and watch the paint flow. These much larger works would let me experiment with fractals, chaos, osmosis and those particular aspects of science that underscore the behavior of the chemical entities we call “pigments.” My goal was to step outside of my consciousness and follow the paint instead of forcing it to become something other than what it was. I even came up with the idea of these paintings as installations, free-standing in frameworks instead of being tied to walls.
Donna painting her father’s racing plane, a deHavilland Mosquito, with some help from 19-month-old Christianna.
I have learned much from artist/authors Rheni Tauchid, Nancy Reyner, Mary Todd Beam, Jeanne Dobie, Maxine Masterfield, Patti Brady and a very special artist, Paul Jenkins, whose giant poured-paint Phenomena became my obsession. I believe it was his work, which I first saw in the 1970s, that really helped me set my course to where I am now.
The time-tested way for an artist to experiment is in a series, where there are certain constraints set up, but other aspects of the work are ripe for variables…a combination of science, art and chaos! So in 2015 I came up with a medium that holds texture magnificently, and a substrate that allows me to experiment freely and inexpensively. I chose acrylic paints and mediums because they are water-based and have offered me the most latitude, and are kinder to the senses and the environment than solvent-based paints. I really didn’t want to pour turpentine!
Of course I still listen to music when I paint, but not always Pink Floyd. Lately I have gotten a lot of help from Nine Inch Nails and Tool, because of certain driving rhythms that flow through me into the texturing medium I use to create the patterns and textures that are essential to this series of paintings. Kind of strange that “Industrial Metal” music helps me to capture the rhythms of nature, but I guess that’s just me…
I would be remiss if I didn’t mention Wildlife Research Team, the nonprofit my late husband, Dr. Tom Kazo, and I founded in 1993 with a single canoe for the purpose of hands-on environmental education. With our fleet of canoes and many stellar volunteers, we have accomplished hundreds of waterway and coastal cleanups here in South Florida, as well as restoring a mangrove forest devastated by Hurricane Andrew. Paddling my canoe over the ever-changing aqueous topography has always restored my soul and challenged my muscles and kept my inspiration bank account topped up. Both of my daughters, Christianna and Jamie Cannon grew up in WRT and have served as excellent volunteers.
Tom and Donna during a canoe-camping expedition in the Okefenokee Wilderness Refuge in Georgia.
Christianna with a horseshoe crab moult; Jamie with Tom after a Matheson workday.
Yet this series which I call “Dimensional Abstracts,” began with my take on landscapes as seen from an aircraft. Perhaps this goes back to when I was a small child and my pilot father, Captain Don McVicar, KC OBE, placed me in the copilot’s seat of our Beechcraft Bonanza, CF-FZG (seen here) which he flew everywhere, while I peered out the window at the cloudshapes and the land and water beneath our wings. I realized that I could shape textures with that acrylic substance that were fractals of the actual landscape miles below. Then I could apply paint to that texture reminiscent of the full size natural forces of geology. Artists need to keep experimenting and growing; after unveiling my Dimensional Abstracts in 2016 I moved from topographical subjects to the unseen but powerful forces which had shaped them, the energy swirling all around us. In December 2021 I added my “Energy Texture” sculptured canvases, which I consider stepping stones or rough sketches for my current work, which is not yet ready to be revealed. I love those cool little guys!
There’s such magic in letting these pigments do their own thing, to releasing control and relaxing into the effect. Of course, my years of experience, observation, color studies and choices of pigments, mediums, tools and so on affect the outcome. So have I found “that thing” yet? Well, I think I am a lot closer to it than I was a few years ago. I have succeeded in creating paintings and bas-relief sculptures that, in an age of multi-billions of gorgeous photos and prints, are utterly unique. Each one captures a moment in time, in my life, that will never come again, even if the same music is playing and all the same materials and colors are in use. Each one is a thing unto itself, an entity, even the ones which have been inspired by landscapes and oceanscapes far below.
It is a lifelong pursuit that will keep me busy until, I pray, right up to my very last breath.
Embrace Chaos.
Donna
Davie, Florida
November 2016
Photos below: Tom Kazo with his beloved Trep and Rhoda at his Hell on Paws training kennel in Miramar, Florida, 1979
Loretta and Don McVicar with a Bonanza during a publicity photo shoot for Beechcraft in Wichita, Kansas in 1948; he was their Canadian representative and the two of them flew all over North America to prove the airworthiness of the Bonanza.
Don McVicar in his best Howard Hughes mode poses with his deHavilland Mosquito before the Bendix Trophy Air Race in 1948.
As I mentioned above, Tom and I founded Wildlife Research Team in 1993 with one canoe; ten years later we had a fleet of almost thirty that were used hard in cleanups and habitat restoration projects. That year, Tom was named a NOAA Environmental Hero of the Year for “his unique vision” in our Project Baitfish, that brought back the mangrove habitat of Matheson Preserve to health when nobody else could figure it out. I have had some rough times keeping WRT paddling since he passed away in 2006, but I am still committed to our dream…we are always looking for volunteers to keep South Florida waterways safer for wildlife…and donations, just like all registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit organizations. Learn more at
One of the most important projects I have undertaken in the past few years is the re-publishing of my father’s aviation memoirs. I am so very proud of him…not only did he survive many adventures from the time he obtained his Private Pilot’s Licence in Canada, in 1936, through his service in the RAF Ferry Command in WW2, through twenty years of running the airline he founded, World Wide Airways, but he wrote thirteen books about the whole thing! Here’s Dad at a book launching in Dorval, Quebec, in 1986, with titles published by Airlife in Great Britain. He passed away in 1997. When I realized that thanks to Amazon’s publishing platforms, I could bring forth his well-received books again, I got busy! Learn more (and purchase Ferry Command Pilot and South Atlantic Safari) by visiting www.wordsonwingspress.com