Artist Statement

My personal odyssey began in Chicago, where the energy of the city collided with the serenity of my reflections. A fact that is central to my art. Chicago is a place that creates a physical and intellectual tension, a certain division and duality that follows me even to this day.

Ultimately, the love affair with the magical city of Chicago was replaced with the energy that I found in the artists colony in Woodstock, New York. Woodstock is a different locale. Woodstock, where I extended my voyage into the place of a more exquisite fine art. Woodstock, where my door of perception opened to the spontaneity and curious emotion of the live model, producing a flow of feeling to my canvas.

The initial evolution of the forms and the peripheral tension in my art is the central focus in my work. My work with models is influenced by my love of the great masters of the Renaissance. My work reveals the influence and affection that I feel for the classical figurists of the twentieth century, such as Gustav Klimt and Pablo Picasso. When I paint I distance myself from these artists as I infuse my painting with a glazed translucency that was not in their realm. When I paint my personal discovery with all aspects of my learning is extended on to the canvas. I paint the abstract essence and spirit of the human figure with complementary colors while I endeavor to retain the body's basic form. I use my backgrounds to produce linear extensions into and out of my figures creating an intimate and intricate relationship between the human body and it's discrete artistic environment.

The forms and their relationship to the human body allow me to turn flat, planar images around on their own axis, ultimately creating a three dimensional illusion. Volume is the thus created, especially with the assistance of the spatial inter-relationship of lines, movement and geometric planes, thus producing an almost crystalline perspective of reality.

By conscious manipulation of the diverse elements, I create an alter ego that speaks the dichotomous language of Ying and Yang which divides the soul of every man. By exploring the diverse elements of the human figure and its many reflections and projections, I see a different concept of self and reality, in the same way that a crystal reflects and diffracts its own inner and outer realities. I combine this technique with my internal passion, allowing this emotional element to fuse all disparity into the segmental wholeness of myself.

Roswita Szyszka