3 minute read
Realism with a twist
By Scott Williams
Susan Moshynski's creative has spanned many roles: artist, designer, illustrator, and even an ongoing, if occasional, gig as a political cartoonist—long before “side hustle” became part of everyday vocabulary. But it is in her role as a fine artist, a painter, that she has found her passion and her greatest success.
Moshynski says she “came by it all honestly,” learning to paint from her father, a full-time sign painter and part-time artist. After beginning his career with Bata Shoes, he realized he could work independently and support his family solely with his artistic skill. “He was a master of drawing,” she recalls, “an absolute master.
Her own abilities developed further through a Fine Arts degree at York University, followed by a career in design and illustration in the ad industry. While that work satisfied her creative urges to a degree, she always felt something was missing. “I wanted to paint,” she says. “I wanted to get my hands right in it—you know, be messy!” In 1991, she returned to Rednersville Rd. and began painting in earnest.
Moshynski describes her creative journey as providing “solid bones” for her work—from the fundamentals of drawing and painting learned from her father to the sense of form and balance shaped by her design work. Onto that foundation, she has built a vibrant and varied body of work that dances between realism and abstraction. A gallery curator once described her style as “realism with a twist,” and Moshynski immediately recognized its accuracy. “That phrase said almost exactly what I’m doing.”
The “twist,” which she calls “the magic,” is evident throughout her art. Bucolic landscapes burst with splashes of unexpected colour; quiet scenes are animated by movement and light. Her palette stretches from the earthy tones of Rembrandt to fluorescent brights, sometimes accented with sparkles, mixed media, or even gold leaf. “When the sun hits it at a certain angle it just glows,” she says. Whether rainforest parrots or Catalonian street scenes, her bold lines and colourful brushstrokes—what she calls her “signature slashes”—make her work instantly recognizable. “It’s not just a mass of colour. There’s something happening to you.”
Her wide-ranging style can be a challenge for gallery curators to position, yet she has enjoyed significant success in exhibitions and sales. Even so, she finds her greatest connection with viewers through her own studio, where visitors can encounter the full breadth of her work. She has been part of the Rednersville Rd. Studio Tour since its inception, taking only a brief sabbatical to focus on the Prince Edward County Studio Tour, and looks forward to returning.
For Moshynski, all of life holds an element of magic. That same magic in - fuses her paintings, which can be experienced at her By The Bay studio on Rednersville Rd., open year-round by appointment or chance.
