JACKIE SKRZYNSKI

Born: Rochester, NY Studio in Newburgh, NY

Jackie Skrzynski [pron. skrin-ski] grew up one of eight children in a family that transplanted from western New York to North Carolina. She believes her southern childhood and Polish Catholic roots contributed to her somewhat gothic sensibility. She earned her undergraduate degree from UNC-Chapel Hill and her MA and MFA from the University at Albany, NY. Her drawings have recently been exhibited at Theo Ganz Studio in Beacon, NY, Morehead State University in Kentucky, the Arc Gallery in San Francisco, and Les Abattoirs d’Avallon in France.

Jackie is inspired by what she perceives as an arbitrary boundary between humans and the natural world. Whether she is riffing on mythology and parenthood or hunters and their trophy animals, she intends to make works that are both beautiful and unsettling. Her drawings range in scale from a few inches to several feet, and engage the viewer with the physical properties of charcoal, pencil and pastel.

Art Historian Carol Duncan wrote that Jackie’s imagery “avoids completely the cute, the cuddly, and the sentimental…If she breaches the boundary between the human and the animal, she does so to challenge its veracity and retrieve something of value on the other side.”