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Christina Narwicz, Artist

Christina Narwicz bases much of her work on the natural world. Although often abstracted, the painter’s organic themes clearly reference botany, the Caribbean Islands, the constantly changing environment as well as her own garden. Narwicz has exhibited nationally and internationally in both solo and group shows at venues such as Artemesia Gallery (Chicago, IL), Galerie Shulgasse (Wurzburg, Germany), Garden of the Zodiac Gallery (Omaha, NE), among others. Her paintings have been featured in publications such as Metropolitan Home, Omaha Magazine, The Briar Cliff Review and The Omaha World Herald. Awarded Artist-in-Residence at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts in Omaha, Nebraska, she has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Mid-America Arts Alliance as well as three individual Artist Fellowship awards from the Nebraska Arts Council. Narwicz earned her BFA from Alfred University, New York State College of Ceramics and currently lives in Omaha, Nebraska. Narwicz was nominated for the 2013 Joan Mitchell Foundation award.

ARTIST'S STATEMENT

Scientists and artists are distant cousins at the very least. Like a scientist my work is driven by curiosity that feels like what I imagine that kernel that is the first step of scientific exploration must feel like.

My work has always had a spontaneous and multi-streamed direction. Memory and the natural world are the starting points for my image making. My methods are very different and only a few are remotely of the “Scientific” variety none- the -less, I am continually searching and chasing my own intuitive experiments and theories. My findings fall into the poetic rather than that of the Journal Scientific.

Natural phenomenon like the physicality of water or the reciprocal qualities of honey and bees that create it fascinate me with their perfunctory and yet abstract qualities. The beginnings are the same as the endings and yet nothing is ever done (finished). These new works are another step in my exploration of collective memory in the context of our place in the cyclical nature of nature and the fluid nature of the mind.