Andrzej Karwacki is our ArtResin Winner!

Congratulations to Andrzej Karwacki, our latest ArtResin Winner!  Based in Richmond Virginia, Andrzej uses bold color, texture and resin to create his abstract pieces: 

"I use wood, paint, resin, and collage material to create complex textures, and depth, which for me is part of process which I enjoy most."

Describe your artwork:

In my current series of paintings, I have literally reconstructed my paintings to embrace the underlying order and harmonic balance that supports the organic and, at times, chaotic nature of life.  The style is created by the application of paint and resin with a palette knife to thin wooden boards, which are consequently cut up into strips and collaged together in a different order thereby creating more graffiti like painting landscape or simplified color based atmospheres.

Does where you're from or where you currently live influence your work? 

My work is influenced by Urban landscapes and The New American Painters movement as related to works of John Chamberlain and Mark di Suvero who have similarly prioritized spontaneity and expressive force.

What's your art background?  

My work is a combination of numerous education and life experience [including a] five year degree in bachelor fine arts, masters in urban and landscape, architecture, and masters in integral psychology.

Are you a full-time artist or do you create around work hours?

I have a full-time artistic career, however My artistic directions is also influenced by my private practice in counseling and transpersonal psychology, which influences my work direction and provides respite and equanimity.

How did you discover resin?

Discovered resin any early years of 2000 by observing how light and luminosity enhance colors and preserve paint. By experimenting with resin as a finished surface, I started, including it into a mix of colors in creating depth field.

How has resin impacted your artwork?

Since resins ability to change depth of color in my work, use have opened my art to new audience and exhibits. Resin itself provides a beautiful finished surface. That's unlike anything currently available on a market and it could be challenging to use it effectively. It does offer a possibility for new creative ideas.

Can you provide a brief rundown of your process?

The style of my work is created by the application of resin and paint with a palette knife to thin wooden boards, which are consequently cut up into strips and collaged together in a different order thereby creating more graffiti like painting landscape. In the Chronicle Series, the process includes additional step of including strips of collages made from various newspapers and magazines to bring fragments of images and text into composition. The collage also serves to ground the work in time and place, with references to Art, Poetry and Urban contemporary lifestyle.

Why do you want to make art? What motivates you to create? Does art help you in other areas of your life?

Art is but a child play. I think at heart, all of us want to remain that way. The creative process is nothing more than a playful rediscovery of the world as we see it. Art helps us to percieve the world in a new way.

What do you hope someone sees or feels when they look at your art?

I agree with Leo Tolstoy who famously said that the aim of art, and by extension his own work, was not to resolve a question definitively, but rather to compel people to love life in all its complexity and inexhaustibility.

How do you define success as an artist? What does that look and feel like for you? 

I believe that a work of art should transmit emotions, creating an empathetic connection between the artist and the audience. And if art invokes an emotion in a viewer then this makes my work more purposeful.

What's your favorite resin tip you'd like to share with our readers?

Patience and practice. It is important to cover resin while it is curing and use low humidity and steady temperatures.

Where do you sell your work?

My paintings are currently exhibited Los Angeles, the San Francisco Bay Area, Chicago, Dallas, Huston, New York, Boston and London.