About Kasia Szczesniewski
For confirmation on available artwork, commissions, or all other inquiries,
please e-mail: kasiaartstudio@gmail.com
When planning a new artwork, my intention is to visually and mentally captivate viewers. I want them to be intrigued, moved, and engaged in observations and interpretations.
MY RECENT PROJECT “Open Heart” is named as such for a few reasons.
First of all, it is a tribute to the Heart, a part of our body, which acts not only as a pump, but also has its own memory, generates the largest electromagnetic field in the human body, is a sensitive detector (reacting to geological, geophysical, and astrophysical changes), and is a sophisticated information encoding and processing center.
My art project points out how important it is to open your heart to other people’s experiences, which means listening to their stories, being curious and empathetic. We need to realize how much and in how many ways we are connected with each other, because only then we can truly grow.
Having an open heart means accepting past experiences, believing that I am going through them for good reason. It means finding beauty in everything, even in the smallest things, and taking it in.
And lastly, there is an almost literal meaning to the title “Open Heart”. At a certain age we start looking back to analyze our lives. My art project is such an attempt. For it, I became a “surgeon”. I cut open and search my heart for things that shaped me, and I re-experience them through art. It was a difficult process because besides beautiful, positive memories of love and awe, there are also feelings of hurt, disappointment, and shame. My artworks contain personal confessions and opening up like that isn’t natural for me. I am a secretive person, and it feels exhibitionistic. Fortunately, the message is hidden behind a web of visual symbols, that are like an abstract code which only I know. Particular elements of the story can be interpreted by the viewers in many ways. It is like this because life history of each person differs, and for that reason colors, shapes, and textures speak to every individual in various ways. I like having that ambiguity in my compositions. When artworks are open for the interpretation, then viewers can find their own voice reflected in them.
To make my works visually intriguing, I juxtapose rich textures made with paper, (or sometimes other materials, like sand or crackling acrylic medium) with spatial illusions created with acrylic paints.
For last 8 years, textures became the most distinctive part of my artworks. They reflect my fascination with structures in nature, the ever fluid combination of order and chaos, growth and decay that are engraved into our world. Paper is a perfect medium for representing this mix of randomness and order. It is easily pliable, has many gradients of transparency and thickness, it seems itself like a part of Nature with the memories of trees enclosed in its fibers. It feels satisfying to tear, crinkle, and crease it in various ways. With curved, or branching shapes, with irregularities, and imperfections I create vibes encountered in the real world, which make my abstract compositions seem familiar and relatable. When the surface of the canvas is ready then it is time to use acrylic paints to “bend” space in all directions: pull and push to create optical illusions of depth.
Kasia studied Architecture at the Wroclaw University of Technology (Poland) where she acquired a solid foundation in drawing and composition. After moving to the United States in 1989 she continued her art training at Harper College and numerous workshops. After many years of self-educating and refining her artistic skills she notably invented and refined a uniquely special artistic technique. It combines properties of acrylic paints with paper, used mostly for creting rich textures. Kasia’s inspiration comes from nature’s mysterious beauty and from the belief that all elements of the Universe are intricately connected. She is an avid proponent of positive thinking and mindfulness. Her art is full of gratitude and awe.
Nowadays Kasia is an active member of the Chicago art community; showing and selling her works, doing commissions, organizing art events. She received many awards and exhibited works in the United States and abroad. Among galleries that featured her art are: Ross Contemporary at the Zhou Brothers Art Center in Chicago; Amsterdam-Whitney in New York; Polish Museum of America in Chicago; Museum of Modern European Art in Barcelona, Spain; Zywiec Castle in Poland. She showed her artworks at the Art Expo Carousel du Louvre in Paris; at the Biennale d’Arte at Caserma dell’Artigliera of Peschiera del Garda in Italy; at the exhibition Segnalati in Berlin. She was interviewed by local radio and TV stations, published in art magazines like Art&Beyond, Art International, Artists Bi-Annual, Living Artists of Today and in other local publications like West-Suburban Life, Polish Weekly, Glos Polek, Polish Daily News, Nad Sola i Koszarawa.