DESCRIPTION OF WORK

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Paul Chojnowski’s glowing, moody images of street scenes, figures and landscapes create a unique sensory experience. The work embodies “the extrapolation and interpretation of light,” he explains, which is particularly present in his nocturne series—a stunning collection that could easily be the artistic manifestation of a Tim Burton brainwave. They are “remembrances,” he says—a glimpse of a street scene or figure as a “notion of what you see out of the corner of your eye.” Although he began his career employing more traditional, non-objective methods, he started to experiment with alternative representation and blazed a trail to a new and somewhat unpredictable artistic process that powers his signature work.

METHODOLOGY

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Early on, Chojnowski’s unique procedure began with traditional touches of pencil drawings on wood or paper, which provided the platform for the next process layer: scorching the work’s surface with a torch, while using metal masks to shield areas that were not to be burned. He uses his recollection of scenes, his own photography and other pictures as inspiration, creating smoky, brooding scenes on thick D’Arches watercolor paper and various woods. He then added the element of water, incorporated as a modulator to his scorching process. The result is what Chojnowski calls a “water-resist” method he says loosens up the image, giving him far wider tonal range. The use of water helps him expand and further define his expression, he adds, helping to ease initial misinterpretation of his work. “People would come into the gallery and assume the figurative work to be a photographic process,” he says. “But they were carefully articulated drawings. They were photographically based, but it was not a photographic process. I’d spend hours explaining, and my dealer had to work very hard to educate people.”

ARTISTIC INSPIRATION

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Chojnowski understandably feels a kinship to Caravaggio, the Italian painter whose work in the late 16th and early 17th centuries also embodied a marked interplay of illumination. Caravaggio’s paintings gave rise to the technique of tenebrism. (The term is derived from the Latin tenebrae, or “darkness,” and refers to a style of painting characterized by high contrast between light and shade.) “You would never look at a Caravaggio in daylight,” Chojnowski says. “He was the one predominant master painter from the Italian Renaissance whom I looked at most carefully.” In a Chojnowski piece, similarly, the light bravely survives its dark surroundings to create a haunting, yet vibrant and glowing scene.

FAVORITE WORK

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“River of Blood/Bridge of Hope,” a 12-foot by 8-foot, large-scale piece Chojnowski burned and carved into birch plywood, is his pick. The dramatic work, crafted in partnership with his collaborator—musician and video artist Kevin Haller—remains one of Chojnowski’s masterpieces, he explains, because of the impact it has on viewers, and also because of its political message of peace. The altarpiece was a “symbol of hope” for healing widespread violence in racial, religious and international conflicts. It was named for a paraphrased quote made by a member of the Shining Path guerrilla movement in Peru: “Before real political change can occur, a river of blood must flow.” Chojnowski used research assistance from the Carter Center in Atlanta to have his work authentically reflect the violent clashes and resistance going on around the world at the time. “My intention with the piece is to convey that this is a river we must cross together and build a bridge.”

AWARDS & ACCOLADES

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Alternate Visions, National Endowment for the Arts with funding from the Rockefeller and Andy Warhol foundations, 1994. Visual Art Fellowship, National Endowment for the Arts and the Southern Arts Federation; and Award of Recognition, Contemporary Artists Center, North Adams, Massachusetts, 1996. Artist’s Resource Trust, Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation, 1998. Seventeen Days of Olympic Art, City of Atlanta, Bureau of Cultural Affairs. Individual Artist Grant, Georgia Council for the Arts.