What emerged from an innocent question from his toddler "what colour is the window?" has evolved into an intensely exceptional painterly voyage. Michael Psczonak who was born in Windsor, Ontario and now calls London, Ontario home is an artist to watch. Represented by the well-respected Michael Gibson Gallery in London, Ontario, Michael continues to show his talent to to an ever growing audience. Recently he was one of two finalists selected by the CIBC C2 Create and Curate Art Program (C2 Art). The program awards $25,000 to help emerging artists to both curate and show their work in the CIBC headquarters in downtown Toronto. The grant is a great recognition of his talent and promising future.
His artwork is rich in meaning as he considers the spatial conditions emanating from the view of a window. Nothing is left to chance. Michael uses the window as a special conduit for his artwork. It is a lens through which he chooses to photograph using a phone camera. The moment captured is one of immense detail and poses many questions about the function of the mirror. It is clear but through it we see and reflect reality and different dimensions of light and subject matter. Michael, through his reflections in the window, dispels our notions of reality. What results is an ephemeral quality in his work. I had a chance to interview Michael and he provided me with great answers to my questions. Please have a look and enjoy.
1 untitled, (Fredericton Music Shop), 2023
You
were born in Windsor and grew up in Southwestern Ontario, what was it
like growing up here? Tell us about your roots.
I grew up in Windsor and lived there until I was about 21 years old before moving away to University. I would say my childhood was pretty average. Grew up as the artsy kid that tried to be cool and athletic but kind of failed miserably at that. My parents had me very young and split early on in my life. It was a working-class upbringing, my dad worked in retail and my mom put herself through university as a single mother and then became an Actuary (I don’t think anybody really knows what that is, but it has something to do with Math). My dad’s a musician so I think that’s where I get my artsy side from. Sometimes I think that working class upbringing affected my own working habits. Windsor is blue-collar, so I like to refer to it as ‘The Windsor Work-Ethic’.
2 untitled, (Goderich Music Shop), 2023
How
do you begin painting, that is how do you choose what to
photograph and then paint? Tell us about your creative process.
I
think my subject usually comes to me organically based on my
interests at any given time. Some work I’ve done has worked out
well, and others not so well. For instance, I really like art history
and so I’ve made paintings of contemporary still-life objects based
on art historical motifs and themes in the past – sort of
historical revisionist paintings. I enjoyed doing them but sometimes
I think they were pretty illustrational.
Sometimes I ask, “how
would I paint that?” – like,
once I tried to look directly at different light sources and try to
paint that retinal experience exactly as I see it. Other times I ask
myself simple questions like “what
would that look like as a painting?”
– and that’s where my current series of window paintings comes
from. When my son was very young I was habitually taking pictures out
of my front window really early every morning when he would wake up.
I amassed this huge collection of window photographs looking out
while it was still dark with reflections of the interior lights on
the glass. And I just kind of simply asked ‘What would some of
these look like as paintings?” It helped that my child was asking
all sorts of questions at that age, and one time he asked me “dada,
what colour is the window?” So, it was like we were both asking how
to describe these transparent surfaces using colour.
While I was
making that series of paintings, I would notice my Instagram friends would post pictures of windows when they would be out shopping etc.,
So lately, I haven’t been taking any photographs at all. I was just
screen-capping theirs and painting them.
3 untitled, (Cactus), 2023
How
does space and colour figure in your artwork?
When I’m going about my daily life I tend to, sometimes more subconsciously than not, look at the world in terms of colour. Sometimes I’ll find myself squinting while in a store, or restaurant, or walking down the street and looking at the way light bounces off objects and the colours it creates (people probably think I’m crazy when they see me squinting). And so, I feel like when I’m looking, I’m always thinking about the colour of objects. So, when I’m painting the same thing happens. When I’m looking at a source image or an object, I’m always looking at the way light forms the object and the colours it casts. I tend to push colour a little bit too. I wouldn’t say I push colour to the extent of the post-impressionists or the fauves or anything, but usually if I see even a subtle hint of violet, or blue then I’ll make obvious use of violets and blues. I find if I try to stay too true to colour it ends up looking more artificial than if I try and make the colour look somewhat counter-intuitive. But I’m always paying attention to subtle shifts.
Because the subject in the images I’m referencing in my current paintings are flat – I’m trying to think of fun ways to push the space using mark-making and different consistencies of paint. For instance, actual reflections sitting on the pane of a windows are immaterial, but there will be actual physical objects on the other side of a window. And so, I’ll play with the materiality of paint in either obvious or unintuitive ways – like, the physical objects will be rendered with thick impasto, and the reflections will have stains and drips. Or vice versa where the fleeting reflections will be solidified in material and the objects will be thinly and quickly rendered. But in short, in terms of colour and space, I’m always trying to make a painting first – I usually try and push the material as far as it can go while still maintaining some semblance to a recognizable “photographic” image. I think of someone like Velasquez and Rembrandt – those two could make something look real, but then as you get closer it just completely falls apart into paint.
4 untitled, (fake London fashion) 2023
How did your studies shape your development as an artist?
My undergrad at the University of Guelph was amazing. Sometimes I look back at it with embarrassment because I was so stubborn and tried to go against almost everything the faculty were telling me, only to try those things on my own years later and understand what they were trying to teach me. I still don’t necessarily do them, but I think I’m more aware of the reasoning. But we all had a great mix of art theory, criticism, and practice. Studio classes had readings and discussions and so it prepared us to think about art in specific ways other than strictly executing something. I went into university wanting to be a teacher, but we had such an amazing community that all supported one another, and so I felt I wanted to be a part of something bigger than just going to school to get a job.
My MFA was great too as it was a little more research focused. I had a really great cohort and the faculty were great, They were really good about getting me to stop thinking so much about what I’m doing and just make things. Before that I always wanted to make really meaningful, ground-breaking, carry the weight of the world on your shoulders paintings. And it basically turned out that if you just make things you enjoy, the meaning will come. I think that happened most recently with my window paintings. I just did it because I wanted to do it and thought it would be enjoyable, but they feel like the most meaningful work to me.
5 April, 2022
At
what moment do you find painting the most challenging if at all?
I’ve always said the first 75% - 80% of every painting is absolute agony…like, the texture, the not knowing, the preliminary layers of paint that look like nothing…just so much uncertainty. But the last 25% when everything comes together is amazing. There’s no feeling like working through that first bit. A criticism I often hear of my work is about my skill level, and I’ve had people say I don’t experiment enough and I’m too masterful. I usually take issue with that because I don’t think I’m doing formulaic generic paintings.
Every painting has a degree of struggle and problem solving. I don’t think there’s ever been a painting I’ve done that has looked exactly as I imagined it would. I actually just destroyed a painting that I thought was good and have grown to hate, and I’m working on redoing it. I would argue that every artist has some tricks up their sleeves that they rely on repeatedly. Also, some ideas of experimentation can be just as mannered as “formulaic” painting. Some experiments just aren’t as openly visible. Nobody is really reinventing the wheel, most of us are all just flailing around in our studios. I flail around a lot. Try again, flail again, flail better.
6 July 2022
How did you feel being chosen for the CIBC C2 Create and Curate Art Program (C2 Art) program?
It was incredible!!! I think, like most artists, I’m my own worst critic with a ton of self-doubt. I feel like over the past two years people have noticed my paintings a little more because I’ve had two pretty successful shows at Michael Gibson Gallery here in London. Those shows felt great and I was thinking ‘Ok, maybe I’m onto something here’. But when you’re a little bit removed from big art centres like Toronto or Montreal or Vancouver you don’t necessarily know how that success might translate to a broader audience. So when CIBC selected me as one of the recipients of the prize I was kind of just shocked. Like, there’s no way I could have been selected for a national prize. I still think it’s a bit hard to believe. But I feel grateful because it seems like the work is resonating with people. And that’s the most important thing about being an artist.
7 untitled, (Hintonberg Sarees), 2023
Which artists have influenced your work the most and which do you want to be associated with?
There are so many it’s hard to even narrow it down. There are so many artists out there that influence me either directly or indirectly. For example, Will Gorlitz is the one who basically influenced me the most to become an artist. He taught me at Guelph and I was his assistant for a while. He was the one that made me realize - ‘hey, this is something that you can actually do.’ Sky Glabush was my thesis advisor and studio mate after my MFA and we had lots of really great chats about art making. He was always supportive and incredible motivational. My pal James Gardner is probably the best painter on the planet right now (I’m clearly biased because he’s a friend of mine, but the rigour of his practice is astonishing, and you see it in the final paintings/objects he makes). David Merritt, John Kissick, Howard Podeswa, Monica Tap, Ted Fullerton…these are all people who I had direct contact with who sort of shaped me and the way I think about and make art. They’re also all amazing artists by the way.
But there’s so many indirect influences that may or may not have anything to do with how I work. I love Ben Reeves’ paintings; I think about them all the time and his colour and materiality…Jen Aitken might be one of my favourite sculptors in the country right now…Vincent Fecteau might be one of my favourite artists in the world right now. I don’t know if I can be associated with any of them because they’re all these massive juggernauts of artists. But I respect all of their work.
8 untitled (Maastricht Bakery), 2023
What do you wish for the viewer to know about your art?
There’s a quote by the Photographer Stephen Shore where he says something like “My aim is to find the universal in the specific.” Obviously, the idea of universals are problematic but what an amazing thing to strive for. I think I’d like to reach that goal through mundane, commonplace, everyday imagery. Maybe something where everyone can say “oh yeah, I’ve experienced something very similar to that.”
9 untitled, (Milan Bike Shop), 2023
If
you could pick three paintings to own, what would they be?
Oh Geez, I don’t know – there’s too many. How about Rembrandt’s ‘Self-Portrait as Zeuxis Laughing’, Manet’s ‘Dead Toreador’, and Paterson Ewen’s ‘Bandaged Man’. Seems like a weird little combination.
10 September, 2022
What direction would you like your work to take place in the future?
This is hard because a lot of people ask me what’s next and I always tell them I’m continuing with the window theme. A part of me feels this pressure to change and do something new, but I have this huge inventory of images of windows and so many of them could make really intriguing paintings dependant on how they’re painted, and I want to see how they’ll turn out. So I think I’m just going to keep working on that until I lose interest or something else pulls my interest somewhere else. But I would love for my work to get looser and less reliant on the photograph.
11 untitled, (Salzburg Mannerism), 2023
How did you enjoy being shown at Art Toronto?
It’s been great! When I was a student, I helped Howard Podeswa transport and install this massive painting at Art Toronto back in 2008. I remember being at the fair and seeing so much work that I had seen in magazines like Border Crossings and Canadian Art and kind of just feeling this sense of amazement. Almost like being star-struck when seeing a celebrity. I never really thought that my work could be there. It kind of felt like the crème de la crème of artists were brought there. I don’t know if that was me being young and naïve or anything, but I remember it felt like this unattainable dream to be included in something like that. So, it feels great to have had my work there.
I think Art Fairs get quite a bit of criticism, but when you really boil it down – I want my work to be seen. Where else will you see so much contemporary art in one space? It may not be the most ideal space or context for showing work, but it’s great to have people see a snippet of the work and maybe take notice and then get interested enough to go see your solo or group show. Michael Gibson Gallery has been incredibly supportive and has really gone to bat for me and tried to get my work seen by as broad of an audience as they possibly can over the past couple of years. The fair has been pretty instrumental in achieving that exposure and I’m super grateful for that.
12 untitled, (Ottawa), 2023
Did you always know you wanted to paint?
Oh yeah. I was always primarily a painter. I think somebody once said MFA’s are where painters go to die. So when I did my MFA I experimented with some sculpture…really really terrible sculpture. And I thought it was so cool at the time. But eventually I went back to painting. It’s just who I am.
13 untitled, (Sorry We're Closed), 2023
Who are your favourite writers?
Ugh….I wish I could say I was an avid reader of exciting fiction books and that I’m in touch with the literary world. But in truth, I mostly read art stuff, i.e., articles and interviews in art magazines, essays in an artists monograph, or art theory books. But if I were to think of my favourite writers it would probably be some of those old theorists: Rosalind Krauss is probably my all-time favourite. Jonathan Crary’s great and probably more relevant to my practice. It’s all really dry and boring stuff…and maybe even outdated in the contemporary art world. But I find it super interesting. I’m listening to Rick Rubin’s The Creative Act in the studio. That’s a really good self-help type of art book.
14 Michael Pszczonak, (Cottage), 2023, Canadian
Tell
us what you enjoy doing when you're not creating?
When I’m not making art I enjoy spending time with my son. He’s five right now and he’s just this amazing little guy. He loves The Beatles and plays the drums. He can carry a beat and knows all of the drum fills and sings along to the songs while playing too. I think he’s this little virtuoso. So we’ll jam Beatles tunes together. I just love hanging out with him. Bring him to the record store, go out to restaurants. We just hang out. This past summer we took a couple of trips to Toronto and I realized he’s this amazing little traveler, so I want to do more of that stuff with him too. That kid is everything to me. I make art because of him. When he’s asleep or at his mom's house I’ll wind down by binge-watching a good TV show. I’m a pretty simple man.
