Kenise Barnes Fine Art is pleased to announce the representation and first solo show of accomplished mid-career artist KK Kozik.

“As to me,” wrote Walt Whitman in 1881, “I know of nothing else but miracles.” Whitman goes on to list some very ordinary phenomena as miracles, from “stars shining quiet and bright,” to standing under trees in the woods, to observing birds in flight. The vein of American mysticism links the natural world with the spiritual and has found form in artists as disparate as Rockwell Kent and Agnes Pelton and KK Kozik: all artists who process what they see, what they experience and what they imagine into a painted image.

Kozik’s minor miracles mostly surface from the rhythms of her day. Prosaic encounters of beauty during hikes, strolls and swims simmer on the back burner of her mind until stirred up and warmed they knock on her door, demanding to be painted. Ideas and images never come out quite the way they went into the pot. Kozik is not a realist, slavishly painting a tree branch by branch, but rather a transcendental hunter-gatherer, a sly burglar of ideas and colors. An island of trees in a lake is what was seen, but Miracle Island is what she painted. The artist releases beauty from the prosaic, her work meeting in the center of the everyday world and the way imagination processes memory and the way her hand executes it.

KK Kozik’s work has been exhibited widely in the United States, Greece, Netherlands, and Germany. She has been honored with William and Susan Picotte Award, Albany Institute of History and Art, Connecticut Artist Fellowship in Painting, Commission, “Flights of Imagination,” Fitchburg Art Museum and Fitchburg State University, Commission, MTA Arts & Design, Rockaway Park Beach 116th St subway station, Weir Farm Trust Visiting Artist Fellowship, Marie Walsh Sharpe Art Foundation Grant, to name a few. The artist’s work has been featured in The New York Times, The Village Voice, New York Magazine, and Art in America among others. KK Kozik earned an MA from Syracuse University, a BA from University of Virginia, and attended Edinburgh University. She lives and works in CT.

Please contact Lani Holloway, Associate Director, [email protected], 860 560 3085 with inquires or to arrange a preview of the exhibition.