We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Michael Polakowski a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Michael, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Learning the craft is often a unique journey from every creative – we’d love to hear about your journey and if knowing what you know now, you would have done anything differently to speed up the learning process.
Painting is difficult. I could probably stop there, but if I had to elaborate I’d say that painting takes years before anything that starts to feel “right.” I’ve been painting professionally for almost ten years and I just now feel like I’m getting to a point where I know what I’m doing. On the other hand, that difficulty is exactly what keeps me engaged with my craft. I want to be making my best work when I’m on the other side of my career. Still painting at sixty or seventy is the thought that brings me the most joy and in many ways is the only marker of true “success” that I measure myself by. On that note, learning my craft involves taking creative risks, asking large questions with my work, and consistently pulling at the next thread that could lead to something interesting.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
I am a fine art painter working primarily in stylized representational work. I utilize a variety of methods to produce vividly detailed environments with acrylic paint that are imbued with a sense of surrealism and absurdity. That has evolved and shifted over the years as I represented a variety of subjects, at times focusing on my home in Detroit, MI, and then broadening my lens to depict the nature of emotional landscapes. I’m concerned with how a place feels, whether it is real or imagined. Most recently I completed a solo show “Rorschach” with Vins Gallery in Taipei. The paintings in the show were a closed loop of past, present, and future. Events took place and were proliferated throughout the larger world that the show created. At its center, an unexplained volcanic eruption could be found in paintings like “Creation Myth” and the symbol of this eruption began to inhabit the sculptures, chalices, and mythology of the still lives within the series. The viewer was left simultaneously viewing a world that is experiencing a large-scale catastrophe, while examining the myths and spiritual symbols that emerge to offer an understanding of the event.
Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?
As i mentioned, my one and only goal is to stay excited about and engaged with painting. It has been such a grounding force in my life and informs how I see the world. My goal is to keep expanding on my perspective of the world through painting, and hope that everything else works itself out haha!
Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?
I think social media can be great for artists, but I hesitate to give any advice on what to do right. Most of it depends on what you want to get out of your career and where you’d like to go. I would say just do what you were going to do anyway and think of it as a journal into your process and world. If people want to follow along they will and maybe something will come from that, but if not, at least you will have some documentation of your life. I think I lucked out that the audience I have found me and I always wonder if I should do more to promote myself online. However, I think its really important to remember that social media is just one piece of the puzzle and maybe there are other things you are better at that would be a better way to spend your time and get your work out into the world.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.michaelpolakowski.com/
- Instagram: michaelpolakowski
