Kinga

“I worked in a high-end nightclub for ten years,” says Kinga, now an in-demand New York makeup artist, as he reminisces about his heady early days. “I was a very recognizable club kid. It gave me a lot of notoriety. I was interviewed by the news. Because I was out there. I wasn’t really being used for anything other than for what I looked like. Then I decided to turn that into music and I got a little bit of notoriety from that, because I had a little bit of talent. I had a regional hit song. But that gets you things, like interviews. I got around. I have posters of myself.”

During the karma chameleon era of Culture Club and Dead or Alive, Kinga, with his spectacular, eye-popping makeup and boy/girl look, was nothing less than out there. And yet, his warm, quiet, folksy, almost midwestern demeanor would surprise you. The last way that Kinga would describe himself is as an “extrovert.”

“You would think that that would be the case,” he said. “The way I looked for ten years, I don’t want to say I looked like Ru Paul, but more like a Boy George. Androgynous. Bizzare. I discovered that I really wasn’t an extrovert, but when I walked into a room, everybody looked at me, so does that mean that I really am an extrovert? It actually gave me anxiety. I was just being who I was.

“I would disappoint people, because I looked like the type of person who would party all night. However, I’ve got extreme family values. Working in a nightclub for ten years, I made money, and it was good money, but I never partied with it. I never did drugs with it. I had never been a drug user, or an alcohol abuser.”

However, the 24-hour party-people turned their heads in his unavoidable, alluring direction, and led him to discover one of the few hidden secrets he didn’t wear on his sleeve: makeup artistry. He honed and developed this skill so that he could share it with the beautiful people, and make them even more beautiful than they believed themselves to be.

“That’s where I learned to do makeup,” he says. “I never took any training as a makeup artist; I just started doing it on myself. Then I started doing it on other people, once people realized I could do it. Local musicians would come to me. I would do it for free even. Basically, rock and roll is where I got my roots.”

He made his way to New York from a small town in the Upper Northwest, near Seattle. It was in The Big, Fabulous Apple where he found he could be more understood, but only to a point.

“I would get called to do record covers because they knew I had talent,” he says. “But I find it way easier to do my own face than to do other people’s. I personally didn’t realize I had a talent.

“I stopped doing makeup for ten years when I finally took my face off. Then, ten years later, when I realized I didn’t have a career, I wondered, what can I do? I’m not corporate. I don’t look conservative. I’m too old to be a musician, and I already tried to be a musician.”

In fact, he opened for Deee-Lite, and like they sing in their mega-smash, “Groove Is In the Heart,” Kinga was “going to dance and have some fun.”

“I never thought I was ever going to be on this side of the business,” he says. “I assumed I was going to be on the other side of the business, as a talent. At around thirteen, I did a little TV training, and I thought I would be an actor. By the time I was sixteen, I was so crazy looking as a result of being part of the whole post-punk scene. By that time, we’re talking about the whole Boy George thing.”

Today, Kinga works faces full-time, but his emphasis has switched to soft and warm from hard and wild, both in his makeup style and in his communication with the models.

“I want this to be an enjoyable experience for the person I am doing it on,” he says. “So I try to communicate with the person without driving them crazy. Put them at ease. You have to be very close, you have to touch people. It’s often nerve wracking to be that close, but this really is physical contact between two people.”

The application of makeup is delicate, as is the handling of clients’ feelings.

“I’m a little delicate myself, so it can be hard,” he says, regarding dealing with egos both astronomical and flimsy. “I hate to be told no. But you are going to get a lot of ‘no,’ and you have to rethink how you can make it work for you. When I was a musician, the reality struck me one day that this would be a bad move to continue down this path. But now, I’m doing makeup. I just branched. You find a different road. You have to be realistic.

“There are a lot of delusional people. A lot of people who think they are a model, but you have to ask yourself, are you the right height? Do you photograph well? But actually, I would never say to somebody, you can’t. It’s like if you said to Madonna in the early eighties when she first arrived in New York, ‘you can’t sing like Aretha Franklin; you’ll never succeed.’ I’m a very, very cautious person that way.”

As well, it is caution under the gun.

“I always like to book more time than what is realistic,” he says. “I can’t do it in twenty minutes. If you use me, I need at least the block of an hour, but let’s be safe. You might want to have a cigarette. Your cell phone might ring. My airbrush might jam up. Something can go wrong. Let’s have an hour and a half. The longer you have, the better.

“I did the Legends portion of [AMC’s] Mad Men. It was hard. Ten minutes per person. I did my job in ten minutes. And I’m not having a coffee while I’m doing someone’s makeup. I get down to business. You have to organize before you get there. There has got to be a lot of things with your kit that should always be organized. You always have to know where your stuff is.”

Still, being as subjective a business as it is, it all boils down to the brush and the stroke of opinion and temperament.

“There are people who are going to take it out on you,” he says. “Models want to look flawless. I do my best, but I don’t rely on post-production. I am stunned by certain makeup artists who rely on the photographer to do their work in post-production, where they may say, ‘the photographer is going to perfect it.’

“Women who see my website often assume that I am making them look as perfect as that image. That’s an impossibility. Post-production is imperative, but no makeup artist should rely on it.”

Still, given the wide range of faces Kinga has to work with, he is able to flex his creative makeup muscles, no matter who is sitting in the chair.

“There are only so many rabbits you can pull out of a hat,” he says. “Although, there are rabbits you can pull out of a hat.”

As a result of this rabbit pulling, Kinga has built quite the reputation as a magical miracle worker.

“I once had a person who was really hard looking, and she needed to be softened up,” he says. “So you get in there with your special techniques. Contouring. Shadow and light. How am I going to make this face look better with shadow and light? I think a lot of makeup artists just apply makeup. But what was the first thing I learned? Contour.”

Airbrush is another technique that is a huge consideration in the makeup of makeup.

“The ten years I was away from makeup, I got rid of all my stuff,” he says. “I didn’t have anything left over. So when I came back, I took a little refresher course to figure out how airbrush was. There were a couple things I wasn’t certain of, like how to makeup hygienically. I hadn’t done makeup in ten years, so I did feel a little bit green at that point. Once I got myself out of the class and gotten myself organized, I realized that I shouldn’t have taken the class. You don’t have to go and train to be a makeup artist. You just have to have talent. It’s just something you just have to somehow do. But go to a class if you want to go to a class.

“I’m an airbrush artist now. People assume it’s cutting edge. I don’t think it’s cutting edge. Somebody with a sponge and a brush can do it just as good as an airbrush. I think the reason that airbrush is important is the high definition. There is a theory that sponge and a brush might ‘show up.’ But big pores still are big pores whether they are airbrushed or not. Wrinkles on the face are still wrinkles on the face.”

Men too, get makeup, but as Kinga notes, “For men, I’m not allowed to use the word ‘makeup’; I’m supposed to use the word 'grooming' for men. You can take a guy and do lots of contouring and lots of shadows and light, and really improve their look. It’s just that the makeup can’t be apparent. That’s the real key.”

With his career firmly established, he is now keeping busy with a steady flow of magazines, shows and print advertising. He had come a long way from his original career search.

“I didn’t have a specific idea of what to do as a career,” he says. “I was floundering. The minute I decided to do makeup as a career, I was so focused. That’s it. Every day I feel confident, that there is a light at the end of the tunnel. And that’s a wonderful feeling. At all times, I am studying things. My creative eye is always looking around. Just walk around the streets of New York City and you will get your inspiration.”

For a closer look at Kinga and his amazing work, go to www.kingamakeup.com