Michelle Avery Konczyk’s painted scenes use elements from the human body and the natural world, with absorbing and unsettling results. The works are often rendered in watercolor on paper mounted to panel for both a delicate, moody sensibility.
“I have taken the medium known most for its bright and cheerful connotation and with it, I paint subject matter that transcends into the realm of surrealism. My paintings are an incorporation of various entities. I add extra body parts and eyes, which takes the realistic manner in which I paint into another dimension. Through this, I can show you the beauty that lies within our ugly realities. There is a pressing irony, that is my art, for it is everything you would least expect a watercolor painting to be. It is my goal to push the boundaries of the medium and take it where no artist has gone before, not only in technique and subject matter, but in presentation. I have more recently been working with adhering my paintings onto wood, which breaks the traditional shape along with inviting the viewer into the piece. These sometimes raw and unbinding edges alter the norms of watercolor paintings much like the way my realistic renderings alter our perception of reality. What exactly is reality when everything that we view to be real, our minds have made up? The only thing apparent and true is there cannot be light without darkness, and there cannot be beauty without ugliness—with that knowledge, I make my art.”
- Michelle Avery Konczyk
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