Artist Statement Kaylie Kopicki Places, feelings, and things I’m going to miss when I leave my hometown to go off to college-that’s what I chose to focus my concentration on. Specifically, places from around my hometown of Alexandria, Virginia. I want to remember the memories and places that I chose to paint. Not that I’m never coming back when I go away to college, but these special places won’t be as easily accessible to me as they are now, which is something I take for granted.
Some paintings represent exactly what they depict, a place specifically, and others represent a concept I will miss, for example the art and art galleries from around DC. One of the paintings is of a swing set that is close to my house, I spent a lot of time there during middle and high school and there’s a lot of memories I remember when I think about that playground. The paintings are done on three different surfaces: unstretched canvas, wood, and stretched canvas, sort of like an equation (wood + canvas fabric = stretched canvas). The paintings are meant to look realistic enough to depict the place that I am painting, but they are stylized by being slightly abstracted or messy and the colors are a little more exaggerated. Each of the paintings mean something different to me, because they’re from my memories and I associate specific experiences from each. The places have been a part of my life and have shaped who I am. I hope when people look at them they think of where they’re from and remember places they went and the special memories that they had growing up.