Karla Wozniak

http://karlawozniak.com/index.html

Artists Statement:

I make paintings about how the American landscape looks today. My recent paintings and drawings are based on both my neighborhood in New York City and road trips I took to Florida, Alabama and Michigan last year. 

The places I depict in these works are specific yet general: the main drag of Brooklyn's Fulton Mall, the sprawl of a spring break beach town, a view of the highway strip as seen from the car. These paintings are at once fabrications, conflations and literal depictions, records of the places I've traveled to and through. They are also about painting itself- about speed, slowness, touch, spatial expanse and compression. Of equal importance is what isn’t depicted- disappearing vernacular and natural landscapes. The complexity of these works arises from competing impulses- a love of exploration tempered by a measured, almost anthropological realism. This duality is further complicated by my intuitive approach to making.

Although my work often depicts standardized and mundane spaces, it has a quirky, handmade quality, and thus highlights localism and an individual's unique relationship to landscape.