Paintings

I’ve loved painting since I was very little. Loved art classes in grade school and in high school decided to major in art. Toward the end of high school I decided to study art with emphasis on painting and in 1998 started attending American Academy of Art in Chicago. Coincidentally, none of the paintings I completed at the AAA appear here. I only attended that school for 4 semesters, but my passion for painting remained strong. After the AAA I attended UMD and was delighted to get back into painting. At UMD I learned to detach from a literal style of painting and venture into more abstraction.

I prefer to leave my work open to interpretation…

The following pieces are my work since 2002 through present:

This was a still life study at UMD, one of the first pieces I painted after a two-year break from painting at the AAA.

I painted this piece while I was a sophomore at UMD. This was the second oil piece I painted since I left the painting program at the American Academy of Art in 1999. I was influenced by Cubism as well as sorks by Diego Rivera and Georgia O’Keefe.

Later, I became much influenced by the work of Abstract Expressionist painters, due to my passion for Modern Art History classes. I wanted to paint from the “unconscious”, much like the AE artists did after Carl Jung coined the phrase “collective unconscious“.

After graduating from college I moved back to Chicago and didn’t do any painting for almost 4 years. The above painting is literally my “return” to painting. It’s raw, violent, sexual, strange and completely open to interpretation. Painting this piece after so many years of not painting felt like emotional vomiting. And when I was done I felt so much better…

This piece, “Place” followed the above “Return”. When painting this piece I felt so serene and composed, quiet and collected…

The above piece is the third of the “Return” series. Once again I surrendered to my unconscious to make this painting, which was to commemorate the loss of a friend.

♥ ♥ ♥

These next three paintings were featured in my first exhibit with Margin Gallery Collective in the fall of 2008.

Once again, I took a small break from painting. Another move… Another change…
“The Golden Silence” is the first of my next “mini-series”, where I started using found images as collage elements. This one features three mouths with bugs on their tongues.

“Accidents Happen” is a very personal, emotional piece for me, incorporating images related to people either very close or formerly close to me. This is the first time I used an x-ray and one of my original B/W photographs in a piece.

“CMYK/BW” is a play on the color used in the piece as well as on and acronym in Polish…

• • • •

These two pieces were featured in the Margin Gallery Collective Spring Show.

These next four paintings appeared in the Margin Gallery Collective Third Annual Fall Show. In this series I utilized a lot of x-rays and found images as well as some of my own photographs, all were painted on square wood panels.

This next painting is my latest. I went back to my familiar blue and brown-toned palette and let the drips of the paint and my mind take turns creating these shapes.

This next piece was actually started in 2008. I put it away for a bit, then worked on it more…
Then, I wasn’t sure if I was done or not, so I put it away again…

I recently decided that it was, in fact, done and it’s now one of the pieces hanging at Rewter’s in Logan Suare.