Winska Creativity

I am a highly skilled and experienced educator and visual artist with a strong background in teaching art and design at a university level for more than ten years. I am successful in teaching technical and conceptual skills to diverse learners enabling the translation of perceptual and abstract ideas into compelling visuals through a variety of engaging artistic methods, techniques, and materials.

On the technical level, I offer insights into the mechanisms of visual perception, teach compositional organization, color theory and its application, and expect excellent craftsmanship through projects involving a variety of media and techniques.

I have given numerous workshops such as “Experiments in Yupo” at Colorado Mesa University in Grand Junction, Colorado, and “Metalpoint and Drawing” at Crooked Tree Center for the Arts in Petoskey, Michigan. I have been also working as an Advanced Placement Reader for the College Board assessing the portfolios of high school students enrolled in Advanced Placement art programs across the nation.

Over the last 10 years, as an artist, I have been active in creating new bodies of work and exhibiting in numerous venues across the United States, and in Canada, Poland, and Germany. My current body of work analyzes nature through scientific data, such as radar images, weather surface analysis data, and ERSST data, that is transformed into detailed abstract mixed-media paintings. My works involve layers of materials and techniques such as drawing with dry and color media, watercolor, paint, lithography, and gesso on Yupo synthetic paper or wood panels. Currently, I am also working on a three-dimensional installation using Tyvek synthetic material combined with lithographic prints of weather data and other materials suspended from the ceiling in the shape of a cloud. These artworks contribute to contemporary dialogues around climate change; they also capture how the scientific data that I draw from can be manipulated and rendered lacking in functionality. In the context of the aesthetics of ecology, they comment on our dependence on natural resources and the destructive human impact on nature, but also the problematic use of technology to interpret data visually. These works have been recently included in group exhibitions DATA: Big/-driven/Visualized at the Northern Illinois University Art Museum, Highlighting Contemporary Art in Georgia: Cut & Paste, Works of Paper at the Robert C. Williams Museum of Papermaking, Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, Emerging Artists at the Museum of Arts and Sciences, Macon, GA, and in my solo show at the Colorado Mesa University Art Gallery, Grand Junction, CO. I will be showing this body of work in my upcoming solo exhibition at Georgia State University Art Gallery in Atlanta, Georgia. In addition to an active exhibition record, I have been awarded artist residencies at the Vermont Studio Center in Johnson, VT; Atlantic Center for the Arts in New Smyrna Beach, FL; Crooked Tree Arts Center in Petoskey, MI; Contemporary Artist Center at Woodside in Troy, NY; and Kingsbrae International Residency for the Arts (KIRA), St. Andrews by-the-sea, NB, Canada. Last year in December, my art was introduced into the vibrant artistic scene in Berlin during an artist residency at TAKT Kunstprojektraum, where I gave an artist talk and exhibited my mixed-media works in a group show at the TAKT Gallery. This winter I showed my works in Japan at Studio Kura in Fukuoka where I spent a month-long artist residency; and next Summer my works also will be exhibited in Skagastroend, Iceland as a part of the Nes Artist Residency program. I continue to develop my contacts with artists and arts professionals both in the United States and abroad through workshops, residencies, artist’s talks and exhibitions.

Studying painting in Poland and in Germany, where I was a Socrates-Erasmus scholar, has contributed to my unique teaching outlook and continues to be a vital component of who I am as an educator. As an international scholar, I am constantly learning new languages, and introducing my students to the importance of international studies. At my current institution, I created a new study abroad offering in Eastern Europe (Poland Study Abroad). Having the background of a traditional painter through my studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Poland, where I graduated from a painting program, and experience as a mixed-media artist, I am also capable of teaching painting, including oil- and water-based media, mixed-media drawing and a variety of experimental and interdisciplinary techniques. Besides my studies in Poland, I have attended additional courses and workshops in painting and other media. For example, in 2017 I was granted participation in the master painting class with Alyssa Monks, a contemporary American figurative painter, entitled “Painting: Transcending the Photo Reference.”

I love to see my students evolve in their understanding of the artistic/design media and techniques, stay motivated, enjoy the process of learning and achieving their goals, and grow in their confidence in reaching their highest potential. I'm here to help them to tap into their inner creative self and bring out their best to the world.

Art is a journey, mostly fun and easy, sometimes challenging, but always exciting. I enjoy seeing my students growing in trusting the process, gaining artistic skills, and enriching their everyday lives and those who surround them with creativity and wonder.