My recent work explores the use of texture, form and color to examine the eco challenges facing the world and the impact of climate change on our earth and sea. 

My eco practice has developed 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. 

These new techniques have given me the freedom to explore the world's largest organism and complementary biosphere, CORAL REEFS. These amazing super-organisms have become the language in which I communicate as an artist. As a diver and self-proclaimed “eco warrior,” I see the world through a lens of underwater coral and sea life. The shapes, colors and movement are central to my work, and are designed to raise awareness about the threats to this natural wonder. 

Abstract Landscapes represent an early style of my creative portfolio and stem from my fascination with the natural world and love for Monet and Van Gogh. Since the beginning, I always sought to depict the same kind of tenderness and candor of the outdoors with which these masters achieved. This aspiration laid the bedrock for my abstract landscape works.

Though my abstract landscape paintings began exclusively in oil paint, these modern pieces now include acrylic media too. I apply the paints using brushes, palette knives, sponges, cloths and vessels of all sizes.

My abstract landscapes typically depict the contrast between light and dark tones, contain a central horizon line, and feature either the ocean or trees. Additional landscape elements and shapes are meticulously added to illuminate the unique character of each narrative.

Each landscape depicts a moving story, sometimes guiding the viewer through a mystical, watery setting. As art critic Donald Kuspit says, “It is the creative power implicit in Krutick’s imaginative response to nature’s innate aesthetics…One might say she abstracts the creative flow of nature from its material manifestation in moving water, treating it as an aesthetic phenomenon in itself.”

While the essence of my abstract landscapes is constantly evolving, the core elements of these works are also reflected in my other artistic styles like the Shangri La series, Dreamscape series, and Aurora Borealis series.

The Ice Cube shape has emerged as my artistic fingerprint — triumphantly expressing the human spirit through adversity.

The Ice Cube series represents the process involved in overcoming personal challenges. I often equate the use of geometric shapes to setting “boundaries” or, conversely, being “boxed in.” The molten gold in the middle of many of my Ice Cube works represents the fire from within to overcome a battle capable of melting the boundaries of the cube. Drips on the canvas symbolize the fragments of the obstacle that remain and the memories now inscribed in my story.

It is not a coincidence that my Ice Cube paintings highlight an equal sign. Equilibrium is essential for one to fairly and completely navigate through a problem.  While the shape may appear simple, the canvas comes alive with the dynamic textures, shading, and embellishments with which I dress each work. Variety is the spice that defines every Ice Cube, much like every challenge is defined by a unique set of issues.

As art critic Donald Kuspit writes, “…of course an ice cube is a solid that becomes liquid — Krutick’s paintings are invariably liquid, that is, are always in “flow,” to use the psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s term.” Art historian, Annette Blaugrund, calls the “Ice Cube pictures ... an interesting evolution of geometric forms suggestive of Mark Rothko’s rectangular fields of color.”

The Geometric Series marks the beginning of my professional career as an artist. My first geometric work emerged in 1993 with Walking on Sunshine, a plein air landscape inspired by a delicious summer day. The vertical and horizontal marks displayed in my geometric works originate from my work as a financial analyst—a rigid lifestyle governed by mathematics, strategy, and algorithms.  After closing my chapter on Wall Street and the corporate world, my geometric paintings provided me with a comfortable platform to reflect on old routines and regain my artistic strength.

As you will see in many of my geometric works, I often employ an eclectic color palette to complement the repetitive patterns displayed on the canvas. This practice is designed to convey the multi-dimensional, dichotomous nature of the corporate world: Vibrant yet dull. Predictable yet serendipitous.

Art historian Annette Blaugrund explains, “As with many second and third generation abstract expressionists, Krutick utilizes elements of chance that are personal, emotional, and unpredictable. Using palette knife, brush, as well as sometimes flinging paint at a canvas on the floor, she is able to delineate form through the texture of the paint … and by creative color choices. Even when she obliterates the lines made by the palette knife by smoothing them over with the flat side of the knife … the overall effect is that of dense vegetation with blue water and/or sky peeking through. Later works have the sensibility of patchwork quilts of brilliant color … suggestive of the colors and structure of Hans Hoffman’s paintings.”