Lifting The Veil

ANDREA KOWCH’S MIDWESTERN SCENES EXPRESS THE COMPLEX NATURE OF HUMAN EMOTION.

- Alyssa M. Tidwell

The sublime artwork of Andrea Kowch is laced with allegory and symbolism—a filter through which the vast complexities of the human condition are projected back onto the canvas in physical form. Her latest body of work was originally intended as part of a previous solo exhibition but was delayed as a result of the artist’s continuous “quest for complexity and detail,” she says. Across the Open Sky, an upcoming exhibition at RJD Gallery in New York, is an extension of that narrative, a commentary on the many dualities of the natural world: light and dark, stillness and movement, male and female, yin and yang, and the quest for harmony and balance, with wind and the endless sky acting as emblems of spiritual discovery and truth.

Soft, neutral tones make up the color palettes of her acrylics, which feature subjects with pensive, often solemn expressions. “The lonely, desolate American landscape encompassing the paintings’ subjects serves as an exploration of nature’s sacred ness and a reflection of the human soul,” Kowch says. A native of Michigan, her realist paintings portray an in-depth view of the rural American Midwest