Cathy Wysocki shares details of her painting, When the light of your eyes falls to the ground (for Wayne), completed in March 2025 for this exhibition:
Seven months after Wayne Hopkins, my husband, best friend and studio mate for 43 years passed away, I stepped back into the energy-charged studio again. It was his birthday and before me was the blank canvas he was to work on next. Overwhelmed with emotion, I used the canvas first as a journal of sorts, then with more of an intuitive outflow I proceeded to mix the paint with some of his ashes and went from there. I worked off & on for 2 ½ months then stopped with the work unfinished. I didn’t step back into the studio again until 10 months later and finally finished the painting with him by my side.
Wysocki writes of her work and life:
The mixed media paintings are from my current series “Means Appropriate to a Small Mouse.” They focus on my attempts to disentangle the topsy-turvy, sense-filled world and its reactive emotions that devour humankind like tigers. Vigor, compassion, and active attention to thoughts, speech and actions are my driving forces in my life and in my work. The paintings are vibrant expressions of my focus, be it an imagined portrait or the imagined interactions of a few characters. My use of highly-keyed color, glitter, beads, collage, sand and string, along with pattern and texture, are the means to call attention.
I have been doing 2D and 3D work for over 40 years. Originally from the Midwest, I went to college in Los Angeles and San Francisco, receiving my BA from San Francisco State University. I lived, worked and exhibited in the Boston area for 24 years before moving to New Mexico in 2003 to do the same. In 2010, I relocated to western Massachusetts.
My works often convey a peculiar narrative about concerns and convictions I have about living in this entangled world. They are fueled by intuition and imagination.
