Candy & Calamity

The pandemic unlocked new feelings for many people. For Texas-based painter Kukula, she remembers experiencing grief, anguish and pain in a very acute way

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“We all went through a change during Covid, but my 5-year-old wouldn’t let me dwell in pain,” the artist says. “At one point my cat died and I cried for a month. I was told, ‘Mom, you can’t cry all the time.’” It was a simple but profound message.

Kukula took those experiences and painted them into her new works, which will appear in a show opening June 16 at Haven Gallery in Northport, New York. One of the threads that connect the new paintings is the concept of Zohar, a Jewish mystical theory within the Kabbalah. “The inspiration took me to a non-religious path in observing life and its meaning, and questioning if there even is one,” she says. “There is beauty in the acceptance of the sequel of one’s life. The story that is being told through pain and joy, with the fragile and flitting existence of moments and memories…”