KURT PALOMAKI (1947—) began playing music professionally at the age of 15, living at various times in San Francisco, Chicago, New York, London and Frankfurt. He appeared on three albums with Daddy Longlegs (Daddy Longlegs, Warner Bros. 1970, Oakdown Farm, Vertigo, 1971, and Three Musicians, Polydor, 1972) and one with the jazz-rock band IF (Double Diamond, Metromedia, 1973). Daddy Longlegs had near instant notoriety, appearing on the cover of the UK edition of Rolling Stone on November 10, 1969. High-profile appearances with Pink Floyd, Fairport Convention, Jeff Beck and Frank Zappa, and constant club touring took its toll. A natural introvert, Palomaki found the social and business aspects of his musical career daunting challenges, and instead focused on the recording process, working as a songwriter, engineer and producer.
		In late 1982, Palomaki moved his family to a rental farmhouse in Montgomery County, PA. Now with a day job as a carpenter, Palomaki returned to performing with DaBluez, playing the club and ballroom circuit in the Philadelphia region for three years and recording popular bootleg albums daBluez, Bruno’s Basement and Spot the Fish. As the band grew to a 12-piece ensemble, the day to day rigors of survival and dismissive encounters with record labels drove him, frustrated, to the brush. Palomaki assaulted painting as if it were something to overcome, an impediment. In a fit of manic energy, he executed over one hundred fifty paintings, drawings and sculptures between 1985 and 1989, including the six original “Floating Man” pieces. After winning several juried exhibitions, his works were the subject of a one-man show in Bethlehem, PA. In 1992, Palomaki received his MA in English and moved to a college post in the foothills of North Carolina. And, at 45, he became a recovering musician: “Music had become nothing but a competitive sport. After thirty years the joy had become the junk.” Yet the same disillusionment came to teaching, and Palomaki returned to the building trade as a general contractor. As before, his frustration with the daily insults of living drove him back to art, and he has produced another one hundred fifty works since 2000. In addition to revisiting facets of the Floating Men, he has developed a second series of works focusing on a personal approach to portraiture, dubbed “Pale Faces.” During 2004, Palomaki spent six months in Essex, England, developing his new “Blue” and “Iconography” series and visiting galleries and museums in London and Warsaw, Poland.