Kaity Sawicki

"I have been exploring imaginative concepts in my work, all stemming from my own vivid experiences with life transitions and daydreams. I aim to understand the inner workings of my subconscious and emotional processing, and through this pursuit I use art to represent my whimsical relationship with myself and the world around me. This topic is important to me because our perceptions of external realities build our internal reality in terms of our opinions, emotions, and identities. Our mind has the power to shape truths within ourselves, even when they are fantastical. My understanding of perceptions stems from philosophical studies, especially Descartes' “I think, therefore I am”, along with the doctrine of subjectivity: “our own mental activity is the only unquestionable fact of our experience" (Richardson, Alan and Bowden, John). 

To dive deeper into this concept, I play with narratives that are presented in dreamscapes based loosely on very real life events, however are presented in matters more abstract and fictional than the event itself. For example, a painting called Nostalgia contains my childhood home and various of my favored toys floating above the house. In this work specifically, I took my own reality of vivid childhood memories and experiences, and turned them into a surreal dreamscape where the objects are floating above the house, in a subtly formed thought-bubble created by forest leaves. Spiritual practitioner, Sarah Regan, believes that dreams of childhood homes often indicate unresolved feelings or memories in that location. In that childhood home, lived 16 years of memories in my childhood and adolescence, and a month post high school graduation, came an abrupt move which forced me to leave those sentiments behind. With the use of dark values in this piece, I aim to communicate a sense of memory and distance from that stage of my life. The experience of transitioning from childhood to adulthood came with drastic change, and I always want to commemorate the roots in which I sprouted from. 

Outside of childhood memories, I strive to display my own feelings regarding surreal narratives and identity in my work. I pursue this by reversing the roles of humans and fish in some of my works (Introspection, Observed), and by playing with colors and shapes that I feel resonate with my personality and perception of the world in an abstract sense (Passages, A Closer Look). These pieces are all tied together by means of abstract portrayals and thought-provoking narratives, with hopes that you, as the viewer, can use your own perspective to transport yourself into my internal dreamscape."