Larry Kaiser

Larry Kaiser writes about the machinations of the art world. He has experienced the challenges of the working artist. He knows the highs and lows of a long art career. And he can speak with authority about the powerful enemies a political artist makes. He understands the frustrations from feeling he, the artist, might be the lone sane person in a world otherwise gone mad.

He grew up in Indiana, went to college in Texas, Mexico, Oregon and Indiana, served as an infantry officer in Vietnam, taught public school for six years and was a full-time artist for over 35 years before writing his first novel.

While an Army Officer stationed in Hawaii, his duties included updating the military history of the 25th Infantry Division and writing speeches for general officers and for Senator Daniel Inouye of Hawaii. He helped edit the content of and published a weekly cartoon in "The Hawaii Lightening News", and he project-managed community outreach programs for the Army. He helped bring polo back to Hawaii in 1964. He also helped coordinate Army participation in staging the International Miss Smile Contest in 1965.

Following his military service, his career painting traditional paintings for art dealers spanned more than thirty-five years, and included a three-year stint living and painting in a junkyard. That junkyard experience becomes biographical material that surfaces in his "Joseph's Easel" series of novels in which the hero is the world's most famous artist, who just happens to live and work in a junkyard.

Foxman's in Chicago, Cupps of Chicago and of Arizona, Bob Kuechenberg's State of the Art, Collector's Corner in Indianapolis, and several other art dealers in Texas, Florida, Virginia, Maryland, Michigan, Kentucky, Hawaii, California, Israel, Japan and Malaysia handled Kaiser paintings. It was through promotional efforts of those several art dealers that the author saw the inside of an art world inhabited by sharks. Sometimes the art exhibits featuring his work drew over five thousand attendees, as well as media interest. That cut-throat world inside the business of art is another experience that surfaces in his novels. Kaiser not only writes about a political artist; he is a political painter, some of his work appearing on this author page. The transactions, rejections, humiliations and powerful enemies derived from painting political canvasses informs his depiction of that environment in his writing.

Larry Kaiser has written five biographies and three novels, all published by Legacy Tree Books. "Joseph’s Easel, the Rise of an American Picasso" was his first published work of fiction. "Joseph's Easel, Don't Mess With Culture" was the second novel in the series, and "Who Is Johnny Pistolseed" is the third novel in the series.

When he is not sailing his boat, the Santa Fe, off Florida's west coast, Kaiser lives near Indianapolis, Indiana. He has two sons, three grandsons and one great-grandson.