Artist’s Statement

My work navigates Milwaukee’s identity crisis by reconnecting it with the freshwater sea that gave birth to it. Historian John Gurda asserts that our city’s soul is inextricably tied to its waterways. Like much of the Rust Belt, our foundational industries have faded, leaving us unmoored. We are so much more than beer and brats. My work serves as an anchor, evoking our maritime past not as nostalgia, but as a vital emotional compass.

I reimagine Milwaukee through abstract seascapes, distilling color, texture, and emotion through a blend of history, memory, and digital tools. Using a palimpsest method, these paintings bind us to the Great Lakes, their surfaces revealing layers of revision and rugged determination. Rooted in traditional painting media, the work incorporates found elements such as beach debris and harbor rust, embedding the landscape’s very materials. This process maps collective memory, weaving past and present, to chart a course forward.

This exploration is not just civic but profoundly personal. I am a descendant of the Jones Island fishermen, a proud Kashubian diaspora community that immigrated during the 19th century from what today is Poland. They built a distinctive, self-reliant village in the harbor from driftwood and wreckage, living and dying by the sea. Generations of my family are buried in this soil; the call of the sea is in my bones.

As an artist defining my life’s work, my journey mirrors my city’s. After studying art in college at UWM, I found work in retail management and logistics, eventually leading to becoming an entrepreneur. My time building businesses honed a unique lens that I carry forward as I re-engage with my art, merging a strategic understanding of systems with a poetic connection to heritage. I am no mere observer; rather, I am an inheritor, called to honor these roots.