Produced by Stick Figure Productions, 2019
Jill S. Krutick - Biography
Jill Krutick (b. 1962) is an American contemporary abstract expressionist who painted privately for over 30 years and studied at The Art Students League of New York. In 2010, she began publicly exhibiting her work. She has been praised by world-famous art critics and has had four solo museum exhibitions and scores of group exhibitions both in the U.S. and several major European cities. Her most recent solo museum exhibition in 2023 featured a site-specific 85-foot long abstract artwork, “Coral Beliefs,” at Pyramid Hill Sculpture Park & Museum, Ohio. The mixed media on panel work captures both the exquisite beauty and the unprecedented tribulations faced by coral reefs around the world today.
As a young painter and pianist, later as a media executive and board member, Ms. Krutick has spent her life dedicated to the arts. Painting emerged as her greatest passion, which she now pursues full time in her Westchester, New York studio.
Her work is in private and public collections as well as the permanent collections of several museums including the Coral Springs Museum of Art, in Coral Springs, Florida; Yellowstone Museum of Art, in Billings, Montana; The Longwood Center for the Visual Arts in Farmville, Virginia; and the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Artist Statement
My paintings trace my joyful path of self-discovery and creative exploration. Using only texture, form, and color, I try to capture intense beauty and the constant flux of nature: galaxies, skies, blossoms, and tides. I combine abstract expressionist gestures, impressionist luminosity, and personal symbols of change on textured surfaces that contrast light and dark to achieve pictorial balance.
My early work centered on geometric patterns with linear up and down movements contrasted with the right to left movements of my palette knife, creating a tapestry-like effect of precision and depth.
My recent work explores the use of texture, form and color to examine the eco challenges facing the world. What began as an escape to peaceful, imaginary fantasy worlds, like my Dreamscape, Shangri La and Aurora Borealis series, has now become an art practice exploring the impact of climate change on our earth and sea.
Through my Contours of the Earth series, I examine post-apocalyptic imagined shapes of the world after the effects of climate change. This watercolor-based series imagines the impact of melting ice caps, rising sea levels, and the drying of the land/sea through aridification. In December 2021, one of the aridification watercolors was accepted into the University of Pennsylvania's permanent art collection. Here is a short video which gives a glimpse into the creation of these watercolor works.
Video: Aridification
My eco practice has developed beyond the use of just watercolors to a complex interplay of watercolor, oil paint, and acrylic mediums, together with various paper collage and plastic materials. Through the use of new applications, drying techniques, and materials, I have uncovered practices that connect my materials to a philosophical spirit about protecting the environment. I have negotiated an "alliance" between my materials and the subject matter itself. My work has advanced from being merely illustrative to structurally aligning it to eco-based themes. The work is becoming more open, fluid, and reflective of the aqueous effects of water as well as the debris that clutters it.
Thalassa, 2021, 40 x 40 inches, Mixed media on canvas.