Karla Wozniak
I often dream of mountains
Artist Statement
The exhibition I Often Dream of Mountains by painter Karla Wozniak was comprised of paintings of natural landscapes infused with ecstatic energy. The show included large-scale paintings of mountains and smaller paintings of window views. In these paintings tactile marks, playful forms, and exuberant color combine to form images that buzz between representation and abstraction.
Wozniak’s woven marks build and morph into sweeping vistas. Mountains appear and erode before our eyes. The larger paintings overwhelm with their manic energy, are alive with a density of marks and colors—mountains have become places of mystery and magic. The smaller paintings are more intimate and ground the viewer as an observer. In these, visionary landscapes are seen through window frames, echoing the form of painting as window or portal. What in the larger pieces is an engulfing experience becomes here a space of contemplation, longing, and projection.
Flamboyantly composed and rendered, Wozniak’s paintings feel deeply personal. Taking the observed landscape as a starting-off point, these works form their own hallucinatory and fantastical world. They possess a visionary quality that links to a lineage of American painting running through artists like Arthur Dove and Charles Burchfield, where the landscape is a vehicle for imagination and emotional response.
Artist Bio
Karla Wozniak received her BFA from Rhode Island School of Design and her MFA from the Yale School of Art. Her recent exhibitions included a solo exhibition at the Gregory Lind Gallery, San Francisco, CA and group exhibitions at the Knoxville Museum of Art and Regina Rex in New York, NY. Wozniak’s distinctions include a New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship; participation in the Bronx Museum’s Artist in the Marketplace program; participation in the Marie Walsh Sharpe Space Program; and two MacDowell Colony fellowships. Her work has been featured in a number of publications, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, San Francisco Chronicle, Houston Chronicle, Village Voice, and The Huffington Post, among others. Her work is included in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and the Knoxville Museum of Art permanent collections. Wozniak is currently an Assistant Professor at California College of the Arts in San Francisco.
