Art Statement

My paintings are abstract fields of color. Their breath pulsates between light and darkness.

I use simple materials — oils paints, walnut oil, brushes, linen canvas, stretchers. I paint with watercolors and acrylic gouache at times, as well. .

The practice of painting is my a way of exploring the connections between polarities of experience.

At a young age, I emigrated from an authoritarian government in Poland was about confinement, betrayal and propaganda. Yet, the folk soul of the people and the land sustained faith in freedom, culture and history

I think about the passing of time, the veiling and disappearance of memories and new chance encounters. The memory of a place, home and belonging, displacement and alienation, loss and unknown possibilities, makes space for hope, my relentless yearning for harmony and beauty.

My former dance practice with Merce Cunningham and my connection to the music of John Cage reinforced my innate interest in abstraction. The movement and change, the sound and fleeting patterns in dance cannot be captured, but can only be re-membered. The horizontal gesture in my paintings brings to my awareness the vertical calling to presence of a human being - standing up right, awake and present, while moving through space.

I see my painting process as a mystery not be solved but an archetypal ground where we all meet in our shared human experience.

Bio

Karpowicz grew up observing changes of light and color in the forests, meadows, sky and the sea in the land of Poland. Her father was a professor of agriculture and her mother was an art and art history teacher. Karpowicz first came to painting as a biologist, a scientist, observing nature. She was fascinated by growth and decay, life and death, wanting to understand when things began, how they changed, why they ended. She surrendered to books and microscopes until one day in the meadows she was so moved by the cool reds and the warm reds that she felt compelled to paint the color. It was the only way she felt she could understand what was in front of her. Through her art education she found an abstract expression which became the experiential science she was seeking, another way to examine the world and nature of her perceptions.

At a young age, she was compelled to leave her home country of Poland, then part of the Communist bloc, to live and paint in the United States, where freedom of expression was encouraged and respected. She graduated from Parsons School of Design in 1985 in New York City where she studied under Sean Scully. Gosha Karpowicz exhibited at Hopper House in Nyack, Equity Gallery, The Painting Center, and Anthroposophical Society in NYC amongst many. Gosha Karpowicz was a recipient of Margo - Gelb residency in Cape Cod in 2023. Her paintings can be found in private collections in the United States, Italy, Poland, Germany, and are in the permanent collection in The Museum of Contemporary Art Elekrownia in Poland.