November 2021 Vol. 2, No.10
The Cathartic Fantasies of Tanya Kukucka
I have already settled it for myself, so flattery and criticism go down the same drain and I am quite free.
― Georgia O’Keeffe
Wisdom of the Wind
Acrylic on Board
20” x 20” (51 cm x 51 cm)
2016
Great art evokes a reaction by the viewers, but that is based on their own perceptions. People see and interpret art through a complex relationship between visual stimuli and their personal understanding of them. We see what we see and think what we think, but that often does not correlate with the artist’s inner motivations. That’s one reason why galleries and venues often demand from artists to submit statements to define their work, to explain what they were thinking, seemingly to provide understanding and context of what the artist’s idea was.
Advice From The Ancestors
Acrylic on Paper
14” x 11” (35 cm x 28 cm)
2015
Infinite Angel
Acrylic on Masonite
30” x 24” (76 cm x 61 cm)
2016
Healing Angel
Acrylic on Canvas
36” x 72” (92 cm x 183 cm)
2014
Tanya Kukucka, from the Hudson Valley in New York, does not do that. She does not care what you think, preferring Andy Warhol’s edict “Don’t think about making art – just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it’s good or bad. While they are deciding, make even more art.”
Kukucka’s recent art includes sculptures and portraits, both filled with vast symbolism and mystery. Her hard skills and sophisticated techniques are as notable as her unique conceptualizations. All of her artwork is exceptional in its rich originality and unusual visualizations. Her paintings, in particular, showcase refined elegance and exquisite style, with realistic, stunningly beautiful portraits of androgynous figures in fantasy world settings. Her sculptures combine natural and manmade materials to create otherworldly figures, often with dolls as the basis. She adorns and transforms them with paint, decorations, skulls, bones and other things until they are metamorphosized into illusory fantasy figures. One often repeated feature of her doll sculptures is an open torso cavity containing some other object.
Angel
Mixed Media Sculpture
18” x 22” x 6” (46 cm x 56 cm x 15 cm)
2010
Lughnasadh
Mixed Media Sculpture
28” x 13” x 13” (71 cm x 33 cm x 33 cm)
2000
Diana
Mixed Media Sculpture
48” x 14” x 14” (122 cm x 35.5 cm x 35.5 cm)
2013
The Worm Gets Its Wings
Mixed Media Sculpture
33” x 24” x 12” (84 cm x 61 cm x 30.5 cm)
1998
Indeed, the artist’s personality is the diametric opposite of some of the more sinister interpretations of her art. She is sweet, shy, gentle, quiet and absolutely kind. Given her personality, one could expect that she would create joyful happy art like perhaps sunflowers in a vase or butterflies and bees on a flower. Indeed, she can do that if she wants. Her decorated urn, Finally Free, which holds the ashes of a family member, is precisely such an expression of natural, realistic beauty.
Wingbeats
Acrylic on Porcelain
7” x 7” x 3” (18 cm x 18 cm x 7.5 cm)
2009
The reaction to her sculptures varies. Some viewers see it for what it is, a creative collage, an artist’s surrealistic play on unusual juxtapositions to create interesting new forms, part alien, part animal, part human. Others see a darker side, projecting their own perceptions on Kukucka’s sculptures, imagining them to be representative of something sinister, like witchcraft or occult. Kukucka categorically rejects the notion that her work is in any way demonic or satanic, “It’s their issue rather than mine. I am just exposing my inner feelings. Actually, I make these so that I can be a nice person. I am facing my own inner darkness. People ask me if I have nightmares. I don’t, because I do my art. As a child I held things in. Now I let it out. I see things from a different perspective.”
Indeed, the artist’s personality is the diametric opposite of some of the more sinister interpretations of her art. She is sweet, shy, gentle, quiet and absolutely kind. Given her personality, one could expect that she would create joyful happy art like
perhaps sunflowers in a vase or butterflies and bees on a flower. Indeed, she can do that if she wants. Her decorated urn, Finally Free, which holds the ashes of a family member, is precisely such an expression of natural, realistic beauty.
Finally Free
Painted Ceramic
14” x 7” x 7” (36 cm x 18 cm x 18cm)
2009
The Visitation
Acrylic on Canvas
20” x 16” (51 cm x 40 cm)
2020
Beauty’s Rose
11” x 17” (28cm x 43cm)
Acrylic on Board
2020
“I am facing my own inner darkness. People ask me if I have nightmares. I don’t, because I do my art.”
Awake
Acrylic on Masonite
10” x 8” (25 cm x 20 cm)
2019
Winter Goddess
Acrylic on Canvas
60” x 40” (152 cm x 101 cm)
2016
Carved Pumpkin
2021
The symbolisms in her paintings are her expressions of her own inner anguish, merely personal coping mechanisms. For Tanya Kukucka, art is a cathartic process. It is not a representation of evil, not scary art intended to frighten Christians, but her own reaction to a scary world, based on her own life experiences and trauma. She lost her mom in a car accident at a young age and still laments over childhood experiences that have scarred her. She had to give up much of her teenage years by having to take care of her younger siblings and she had more than her share of the teenage angst and vulnerabilities. She was drawn to the heavy metal music scene and, like many teens, one of her escapes was watching horror movies, both of which has in some way informed her expressions. To this day she fixes lavish and extraordinary Halloween costumes and plays the dressing-up part to the hilt. She loves Alice in Wonderland and is intrigued by the magical. It is all just play. “I am fascinated with death, which has always been a mystery. I try to accept it. I use skulls in my art because to me they are things of beauty that represent the cycle of death and the transition back to life.” She is not ripping a baby open. What some may perceive as grotesque is just her letting things out.
Working in the Studio
Mad Hatter
16” x 20” (40cm x 51cm)
Acrylic on Canvas
2018
Kukucka does not take drugs or indulge in intoxication. Art is her self-therapy. “When I don’t do my art, I get irritable. When bad things happen and life is tough, you got to let things out somehow.” Her paintings usually juxtapose an androgynous, beautiful figure, often musicians or other people she admires, with many different representations of symbols that mean something specific to her: hearts, snakes, apples, cats, thorns, bats, flowers and more.
“I paint for myself and not for others. If they like it, good. I don’t paint self portraits but when I paint a subject, it’s really not them. It’s me. I substitute that person, that muse, for myself. The symbols I use are for life energy, they are keys to new doorways. I just like to make stuff up and that’s my fantasy-life because real life is boring in comparison. It’s my escape. It’s comforting to me. I like thinking, sketching and doing.”
Valentines
Acrylic on Canvas
36” x 24” (91 cm x 61 cm)
2014
The Soul Gatherers
Acrylic on Canvas
52” x 44” (132 cm x 112 cm)
2017
White Queen
16” x 17” (40cm x43cm)
Acrylic on Masonite
2018
Her real life does not actually seem all that boring. ‘Prolifically busy’ may be a better description. She has managed to sustain a living by working full-time in assisting several other regional artists in pottery and sculpture studios. That relegates time for her own art to limited status. She is highly sought after by other artists because of her impeccable technical skills and strong work ethic. “I don’t have a good business sense. I don’t like computers. They hinder my creativity. I learned persistence and this allows me to do what I love, to make a living as an artist. This way I am able to paint and work to make money.” This persistence has served her well since graduating from the art program at the State University of New York Purchase, where she studied under the famed woodcut printmaker Antonio Frasconi. She has been working at perfecting her skills since age five, with unending passion and dedication. Her work is shown in top regional galleries and she has been successful in selling her art, despite her self-professed aversion to the art business.
Temptation
Acrylic on Canvas Board
12” x 12” (30 cm x 30 cm)
2013
Sweet Relief
Acrylic on Canvas
52” x 44” (132 cm x 112 cm)
2018
Self Portrait
We all have to make it through life the best way we can. Tanya Kukucka is a superb professional who loves what she does and goes her own way. Nothing else matters to her.
Hammond Museum curator Bibiana Huang Matheis, who frequently exhibit’s Kukucka’s work, calls her an “artists’ artist” who everyone respects as a person of integrity and great skill.
Saint Sebastian (Detail)
Acrylic on Canvas
Moon Child
Acrylic on Canvas with Real Butterfly and Fabric Flowers
36” x 24” (91 cm x 60 cm)
2012
Saint Sebastian
Acrylic on Canvas
69” x 27” (175 cm x 68 cm)
2014