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At age sixteen, Daniel Kotz painted his first picture, a watercolor. Daniel ingeniously <br />manufactured his own colors, using poke berries for red, which unfortunately turned a <br />greenish-yellow over time; and from earth made yellow ochre, and mixed egg with raw <br />coffee for green. The first real watercolor paints Daniel ever purchased were from a paint <br />store where James Whitcomb Riley was working as a sign painter. <br /> <br />When Daniel, the self taught painter, reached his twenties, Alfred Miller encouraged Daniel <br />Kotz to go to Chicago, where he took instruction from Henry Spread, an English artist of <br />considerable merit. The studio was housed in the Crosbys’ Opera House but was <br />destroyed by the disastrous Chicago fire of 1871. A short time later Kotz started college in <br />Naperville, Illinois, where he remained for two years and two months, when ill health <br />caused him to return to the Kotz Family Farm. <br />