About

Abby Kasonik graduated from Virginia Commonwealth University's School of the Arts, Department of Sculpture.

EDUCATION

• 1998 Graduated Magna Cum Laude from Virginia Commonwealth University's Department of Sculpture at the School of the Arts

  
  

SELECTED EXHIBITIONS

• 2024-25, Made in VA, Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art, Virginia Beach VA

• 2024, Inhabit, Page Bond Gallery, Richmond VA

• 2020, Bond/Bound, Second Street Gallery, Charlottesville VA

• 2019, Summer Show, LYDM Gallery, Charlottesville VA

• 2018, TRIO, NCAI Welcome Gallery, Charlottesville VA

• 2015 Saturate, The Athenaeum Museum / NVFAA, Alexandria, VA

• 2010 Time Out, Second Street Gallery, Charlottesville, VA

• 2009 Transition, H. Scott November Gallery, Richmond, VA

• 2008 Ratio, McGuffey Art Center, Charlottesville, VA

• 2007 The Rentz Gallery, Richmond, VA

• 2007 New Members Show, McGuffey Art Center, Charlottesville, VA

• 2006 Group Show, McGuffey Art Center, Charlottesville, VA
  

REVIEWS & PUBLICATIONS

• August 2023, “Meet Abby Kasonik”, Canvas Rebel

• February 2023, “Pattern Play”, Maeve Haden, C-ville Weekly

• June 2015, "Fluid Dynamics", Sarah Sargent, Virginia Living Magazine, (pg. 35)

• November 2013, "Top 15 Home Decor Trendsetters From the South", Pamela Berger, Huffington Post

• April 2012 "Light & Aerie", Southern Living

• December 2010, "Abby Kasonik", Sarah Sargent, Artnosh

• November 2005, Feature Article, Cottage Living

• October 2004, "World Weary", review by Laura Parsons, The Hook, Charlottesville, VA

  
  

COLLECTIONS

• The Fralin Museum of Art at the University of Virginia

• University of Virginia’s Forum Hotel at the Darden School

• University of Virginia Foundation’s Boar’s Head Resort

Painting

The atmospheric moments of change and transition that occur hourly, diurnally, seasonally, are those from which I draw inspiration. Particularly those moments where the world seems weighty- charged with expectation, indetermination, and unknowing. Where geography and atmosphere seem to be places of experimentation, and what the day or the hour holds is indeterminate and expectant. It seems to me that in these seconds, minutes, hours, there is an alchemy which transpires where atmospheric fluctuations spark an animation in the land, and the elements conspire in a symbiosis of presentation.

I paint these moments as an attempt to offer the viewer a scene that is undefined, but not unclear. To offer them a space in which to sense and embrace the possibilities that exist in those dim, hazy miasmas. I use paint and other media as tools of obfuscation and clarification, to convey a feeling of almost knowing, while preserving a sometimes ominous or unsettling sense of also not-knowing.

Irrespective of the medium, scale is important, and the space implied is vast. This pertains to both pictorial and imaginative space. For me, the narrative element in the landscape genre is strong, and these paintings often seem to function as a stage setting for an evolving scene.

Coming from a background in sculpture, materiality is also important to me, even as it often seems to dissolve and give primacy to the image. Almost exclusively, these images are landscapes, though occasionally abstractions, and the medium- paint and resin, emulsions and pastels- is part and parcel of the expression.

Form

There is a certain thrill in not knowing.  As surprise suspends the thinking mind, our more elemental self asks, ‘what do I see?’. 

                                    
Made of clay, and reminiscent of legs, feminine hips, and the posture and domestic scale of animals and small bodies, these ever-shifting forms muddle our understanding of what is fixed and what is fluid.

Animating pattern obscures the surface and erodes our anchor, eventually returning clay to the place it began, as undetermined

These morphologies, in all their mischievousness, offer a place to experience and enjoy the occasion of uncertainty.