Q&A - Winter, Walk with Me (and other stories)

Join us for a Question & Answer with artist Basia Krol discussing the exhibit, "Winter, Walk with Me (and other stories)."

Barbara "Basia" Krol was born and raised in Warsaw, Poland. She studied painting and printmaking at Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts and traveled extensively in Europe to study old masters in all major collections. In 2000 she earned her Masters Degree in Studio Art from Warsaw Academy of Fine Art and had her first solo show in Warsaw, Poland.

​In 2002 Krol was awarded 3 Artist-in-Residency programs across USA (Hambidge GA, Centre for Creative Arts WA, Studios Midwest IL). Thereafter, Krol moved to Chicago and became involved in the Chicago art scene through Cornelia Arts Building and Chicago Artist Coalition. She ran painting workshops, taught classes at Hyde Park Art Center and worked on portrait and mural commissions. In 2008 she had a solo show at the Vanderpoel Museum in Chicago and a 3 person show at the Coalition Gallery in Chicago in 2010.

Krol moved to Galesburg in 2011 to raise a family. Since then she has been involved in the local art community as well as Studios Midwest, the same program that brought her to Galesburg in 2002. In 2016 Krol had a solo show at Carl Sandburg College and in 2019 at the Galesburg Civic Art Center. In 2017-2019 she taught Art History at Carl Sandburg College. Krol's artwork is in private collections in Poland, Germany, France, UK and the US. She continues to paint and sculpt, as well as teach painting and drawing through workshops and private lessons.

Basia Krol:
My paintings hover between realism and expressive intuitive mark making. My working process is spiritual; I consider nature and art to be sacred spaces.

Over the past 8 years my daughter and I experienced a lot of personal loss. Then COVID came and everyone experienced loss and isolation. I developed a sense of urgency like I had never experienced before. It's like a Heideggerian existential shift: the act of being intensified by lurking nothingness.

I found a new appreciation for landscape and began experiencing nature with new clarity. Over the last two years, I have been painting almost exclusively scenes from Indiana Dunes Park and Woodland View farm, where the owners created a vast prairie restoration. There are also woods and wetlands and a brook on the property. Whenever my daughter rides horses, I hike and play in the woods, like a child. I take numerous pictures on those hikes, which I base my paintings on.

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Closed Saturday and Sunday