“History never really says goodbye. History says, ‘see you later.'” -Eduardo Galeano
History takes the long view. No
matter our troubles from moment to moment, they will wash away as the current of time erodes the shores of the present. Who looks to their ancestors only to see the mundane details of their daily lives? Rather we look to view, in broad strokes, the paths that have led us to our own current moment. We look with an eye to understanding where we come from without a care for what small frustrations may have disrupted that journey along the way.
Charlotta Westergren recently exhibited at 106 Green Gallery in Brooklyn, New York. The show was titled
Home. The show featured a painting titled Carolyn Glasoe Bailey is an investigation of loss, rendered during a time when Westergren’s intimate friend and art dealer of the same name was dying. During this time, many changes befell Westergren’s life.
Westergren says she works in themes, each show is almost like a play but her studio
practice is oil painting. For these reasons, her work takes a great deal of time. Before becoming an artist, Westergren was an architect and this background informs her process and work. Of her work, Westergren explains that her “hyper-real” technique lends her paintings a very photo realistic quality that often does not translate when photographed.
Gut Renovation, the image featured in this newsletter, refers to a time when Westergren and her family were forced to leave their apartment after her two year old was diagnosed with lead poisoning. Westergren began to think about how the environment she created in their new home would affect her son in every way as he grew up surrounded by it.
This most recent show was largely about grief, although Westergren is aware that viewers may not perceive this through her brightly colored work.
Westergren was born in Sweden and spent her summers there growing up. She still spends as much time there as she can with her son
in her family’s small summer home in the southern part of the country. The aesthetic of Swedish architecture and interiors absolutely finds its way into her work.
Throughout her life, Westergren has seen herself as an outsider rather than someone who puts down roots. Having a child has forced her to change this
perspective.
Westergren founded her own painting school several years ago and teaches oil painting to a small group once a week.
Todd Mrozinski lives and works in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He says the city is a wonderful place to be as an artist with many galleries and other
opportunities.
At present, Mrozinski is working on very large drawings using brush and ink as well as watered down powdered graphite. The drawings are realistic images based on his walks to the studio. A few years back, Mrozinski did a series of portraits of clouds. His current work falls more into the category of landscape. The
drawings are rendered in black and white.
The extreme scale of his drawings still lends itself to the usual framing techniques. Mrozinski prefers not to have glass in front of his work and in fact has exhibited them by simply having them pinned up to the wall. This allows viewers to experience the qualities of the paper on which the
work is drawn.
Mrozinski says that people have a strong reaction to his current work. They encounter his large drawings of trees as living organisms in themselves.
The
death of Mrozinski’s father in 2012 impacted his work. Before his father died, Mrozinski was creating paintings of clothing to symbolize people. On the year anniversary of his father’s death, Mrozinski began painting cast shadows. It was this work that he submitted to the Pfister Artist Residency where he was accepted.
