Artist Statement – Stan Chraminski

 

I have spent most of my life creating art. My formal training at Arts High School in Newark, New Jersey, was followed by an Art History concentration at Rutgers - the State University of New Jersey, as well as studio art courses at several colleges and numerous classes at the extension level. Living in Europe for five years gave me the opportunity to visit many museums and see the work of my favorite artists such as Monet and Pisarro at first hand. While living in Seattle for 35 years, I studied various techniques and media. I am drawn to paint the open spaces in and near my environment. Since moving to Kailua Kona, Hawaii in 2015, I've specialized in plein air paintings of local scenes, painting most Friday mornings with the West Hawaii Plein Air group. 

 

I am often asked why an artist, in this age of many modes of reproduction of scenes of the world around us, chooses to paint landscapes. My answer - I love the challenge of it! Just look at the variety of the earth’s dome around and above us. An artist must carefully select just a single slice of this ever changing reality, then combine the elements of composition, color, line, and texture to create the desired emotional impact. Each stroke is a separate decision of color, size, shape, direction, thickness, and texture which can go well or wrong and it is the sum of these strokes which creates the work. It is this process which continually drives me to pick up my brushes.

 

No matter the type of work, the emotional impact I hope to achieve in the viewer is my main goal. I want the viewer to stand where I stood in front of a landscape, or for the abstracts, just in front of the painting, and feel the same flow of feelings I did. Most often, this impact is a scene of serenity to help us deal with our modern chaos, an island amid the storm. I've also done night scenes in other works to show the darker side of nature, captured under the artificial lights we live our nights by.

 

Willem de Kooning once said, "One idea in art is as good as another; execution is all." It is this perfection of execution that I seek.

 

Stan Chraminski