After many trips to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Dale Zinkowski fell in love with the old masters, and with the verisimilitude that artists could achieve in their subjects while working with oil paint. From 1993 to 1997, Zinkowski attended the School of Visual Arts in New York, where he studied the Reilly method with Marvin Mattelson and John F. Murray. Inspired by these techniques and hungry for more information, he began copying from painters’ works at the Met.

Murray was especially influential in Zinkowski’s early artistic development, so when his teacher moved his studio from New York to Arizona, Zinkowski followed him. After three years of private study, the younger artist contemplated returning to New York but chose Florence instead.

In 2013 Zinkowski returned to New York for his final chapter of study and was accepted into the full-time, four-year program at the Grand Central Atelier, where he studied classical technique with Jacob Collins and Ted Minoff. Zinkowski earned his certificate in 2017.

The artist currently lives and works in France, where he shares a studio with his wife, the contemporary artist Karine Falleni.