Emily Wisniewski ’23 (LeRoy E. Hoffberger School of Painting MFA)

Statement

Through this variety of vehicles, I combine traditional painting rules with synthetic and natural materials to express the contemporary juxtaposition of capitalism and the environment. I paint biologically female humanoid figures in caves, desserts, and forests. I work in painting as a two-dimensional space. I paint in oil mixed with beeswax, marble powder, found materials, and flashe. I work on different surfaces drawing on recycled paper, wood panels, and linen. 

With expressive mark-making and gestures of objects, I create a sense of movement which makes the viewer experience a moment rather than a depiction of factual events. The people in the caves become characters that are impoverished women experiencing their environment directly. They are in a state of transformation or labor inhabiting spaces of capitalism marked on the outside frame. Thus, reality and dream, capitalism, gender, and environment collide to become materials and forms.