about
Kara Patrowicz (neé Waxman) is a visual artist exploring the intersection of fibers, painting and drawing. She has exhibited throughout Massachusetts, New York, Ireland, and most recently in Switzerland through the Art in Embassies program. She has been a Fulbright Grant recipient in Painting to Ireland, and a 2019 nominee for the St. Botolph Club Foundation Emerging Artist Award. She has taught art courses at UMass Lowell and the Brookline Arts Center and worked as an Artist-in-Residence at Boston Children’s Hospital.
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Patrowicz earned her B.F.A. (Painting) from Boston University, Post-Baccalaureate (Studio Art) from Brandeis University, and M.F.A. (2-D Media) from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design (MassArt). She is a member of the Concord Center for the Visual Arts, ArtsWorcester and the Surface Design Association, and lives and works in Maynard, MA with her husband and young son.​
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ARTIST STATEMENT
I desire to evoke rare moments of quiet and solace amidst the flood of present-day distractions. I love the process of slow-looking and developing layered, nuanced surfaces as a form of contemplation. The restorative, embodying aspects of blending tactile fiber and paint materials are also central to my work.
I strive to convey an authentic experience of beauty in daily life and evoke the tenderness and sacramental qualities of domestic and familial rituals. My artwork focuses on still life, room interiors and family scenes, typically on a small scale, to create intimate views into one’s interior life. Inspirations include the Nabis group and Mary Cassatt, Kaylan Buteyn's "Artist/Mother" podcast and embroidery artist Cecile Davidovici. My approach to art-making has also been shaped by the writings of Jacques Maritain, Thomas Merton and Flannery O'Connor on faith and art.
Through subjects like weathered chairs or fleeting moments of parenthood, my work hints at the interplay of absence and presence, memory and experience in fundamental human relationships.
Portrait of the Artist, 9 months pregnant
Courtesy of Jonathan Patrowicz
There was a sunlit absence.
The helmeted pump in the yard
heated its iron,
water honeyed
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in the slung bucket
and the sun stood
like a griddle cooling
against the wall
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of each long afternoon.
So, her hands scuffled
over the bakeboard,
the reddening stove
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sent its plaque of heat
against her where she stood
in a floury apron
by the window.
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Now she dusts the board
with a goose’s wing,
now sits, broad-lapped,
with whitened nails
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and measling shins:
here is a space
again, the scone rising
to the tick of two clocks.
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And here is love
like a tinsmith’s scoop
sunk past its gleam
in the meal-bin.