Lisa Kowalski’s love of painting is evident the moment you set eyes on one of her dynamic, succinct compositions. Reminiscent of Abstract Expressionism at it’s best, Kowalski seems to share her own intimate dialect with color and line. Her work has a startling honesty to it. The viewer has an immediate emotional response that leaves an indelible impression. They remind me of the livid purple bruises that appear on the inside of your eyelids when you look directly into the sun: vibrant but elusive, hard to define. I recall that while studying art history I struggled to learn the language of abstract painting. It was difficult for me talk about work that possessed no easily recognizable visual symbols. For me they often read like sheet music without notes. It was only the work that achieve that illusory symbiosis between simplicity and abandon that I felt any connection to. The kind of work that was purely sensory, like Mark Rothko; a raw feeling on canvas. Kowalski’s paintings possess this kind of balance. They are simple without being empty; elegant and sparing.

In her statement Kowalski writes, “I am in love with the eloquence of sparseness and everything to do with the act of painting: the smell, the lushness of oil paint, color.” Her technique is spontaneous and unmitigated. Inspiration “gets channeled and flows from brain to arm, hitting white board with that first wonderful stroke of vibrant color, and continues with adding and subtracting, stripping down to the most essential.” Her new body of work, “Into the Brilliance,” consists of large and small scale wet-on-wet oil paintings. The show will be opening Thursday, September 2nd at Portland’s Half/Dozen Gallery.

Lisa Kowalski currently lives and works in Denver, CO. She received her BFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL in 1988. She has exhibited work nationally and internationally including the Contemporary Art Workshop, Chicago, IL; Aqua Art Fair, Miami, Fl; Bridge Art Fair, London, UK; Square 101 Gallery, Denver, CO; NavtaSchulz Gallery, Chicago, IL; Half/Dozen Gallery, Portland, OR; Lafontsee Galleries, Grand Rapids, MI.

Half/Dozen is located in the Everett Station Galleries.
625 NW Everett St, #111, Portland, OR 97209