Sheryl Budnik

 

Artist Statement 2010

My approach to paint is physical and dynamic. I like to make marks, quickly putting one color next to another to see what happens, creating a physical dance of oil and pigment. When you look at my painting I want the thick scrape of oil and pigment to create a visceral experience. My painting is about a special combination of place and time and light. On a beach or out in the field, I look very carefully and drink it in —— any photographs are separate from this experience. Sometimes I plan a composition to bring out the dynamic of an idea, usually I intuitively start with the impulse use a certain combination of colors, then imagine deep water, a beach, or the night. I look at the canvas surface and feel the horizon, select and mix colors, and begin the painting. When the first wave or cloud is in place, an intense flow of painting
pulls me forward.
The painting calls for more of a certain color here, less paint here, more texture, a smoother transition. The canvas may tip upside down —— the sky becomes the water. I move the canvas around in different lights, solving paint areas as I go. I want to push the paint to sing the high notes, I’m looking for that amazing expression of paint, mark, color, light and air. It is in the stillness of standing in awe at sunrise at water’s edge or in an empty field in the middle of a day, that we come to the heart of who we are. The encounter conjures a feeling of wholeness. The trick is to put that moment in the paint —— in the space between the canvas and the brush. I want my paintings to reveal more than is visible —— I want the paint and
image to stir a human feeling. Recently, I’ve been trying to imagine the landscape before me as pure marks, color and energy.
The paint color and mark is what excites me, rather than the specifics or inspiration of the place.

Sheryl Budnik

Biographical Information

Born: Grand Rapids, MI

Education: MFA Master of Fine Art, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI
BFA Bachelor of Fine Art, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI

Travel: Amsterdam, Brussels, Crete, Greece, Guatemala, Mexico, Morocco, Thailand, Vietnam

I fell in love with paint and making marks in Life Drawing art classes at the University of Michigan.
Mignonette Yin Cheng required we work quickly and use all of our media. Teacher and surrealist
Gerome Kamrowski challenged art boundaries and surprised me with““maybe you are a painter.”

Next, the University of Wisconsin graduate program invited contemporary artists to work in our art studios. I could watch Wayne Thiebaud create his colorful, impasto paintings. MFA in hand, I left for Greece and Crete, first in Amsterdam and Belgium to study Van Gogh, Rembrandt and Vermeer. Back in Madison I exhibited sculpture at the Madison and Kohler Art Centers.
In a few years, I bought land in northern Wisconsin, later settling close to Lake Superior. The Wisconsin light and landscape around my home inspired over 10 years of painting that were exhibited in Madison, Duluth, Chicago and New York.
Returning to Michigan, the fields and orchards near my home recently inspired a landscape series. Artists Bonnard, Wolf Kahn, John Twachtman, Albert P. Ryder, and George Innes continue to challenge my vision and technique.
I grew up near Lake Michigan, lived near Lake Superior, and now study the powerful ocean along Long Island, NY. My current work is all about Water. Knife, brush and paint meet the canvas —— I watch and follow along as color and marks summon the Sea.