Audrey Ushenko

In Natural Habitat

And All Mankind, oil on linen, 48 x 60, 2003

Audrey Ushenko
In Natural Habitat
RIDER UNIVERSITY ART GALLERY
September 24 - October 25, 2015

OPENING RECEPTION

Thursday, September 24, 5 - 7 p.m.

ARTISTS TALK

Thursday, October 1, 7 p.m.

GALLERY INFORMATION

Tuesday to Thursday 11 a.m. - 7 p.m.

Sunday noon - 4 p.m.
Professor Harry I. Naar, director

FRONT COVER: Intimations, oil on linen, 36 x 48, 2005

BACK COVER : Living Christmas Trees, oil on linen, 24 x 36, 2012 (detail)

This exhibition is funded in part by a grant from the Mercer County Cultural and Heritage Commission, New Jersey State Council on the Arts, Department of State.

A Conversation With Audrey Ushenko

and Harry I. Naar, Professor of Fine Arts & Gallery Director, Rider University
Harr I. Naar - Can you tell me about your artistic influences from your childhood
and family background? Was anyone in your family interested in the visual arts?
Audrey Ushenko - Both my mother and father were interested in visual arts. My
mother always said that I would be a visual artist, although I was determined to
be a concert pianist. When she was dying she said an interesting thing. I always
thought that visual art was the lowest form of art because it is all about pleasure,
but now I think that it is the most connected to reality because suffering is unreal.
HIN - Your father was a philosopher who was affiliated with the Institute for
Advanced Studies in Princeton, New Jersey. What area of philosophy was he
concerned with and did he play a role in your education?
AU - My father was a metaphysician. Metaphysics here is that branch of philosophy
that examines the other branches. He wrote a textbook on logic and later, books
with titles such as Power and Events, The Philosophy of Relativity, Dynamics of
Art, The Field Theory of Meaning.
He taught mathematics and symbolic logic (students of his went on to develop
the DOS operating system) and he was among those that anticipated the coming
of the cybernetic revolution.
My father, I would say, always hated school, and encouraged me to be cavalier about
it. But he always gave me a lot of books. He was the one father who never told us
children that the things in fantasy fiction or science fiction movies were impossible.
I remember him telling me that we cant know life has to be carbon based. He
taught me that one can prove something exists but one cannot prove it doesnt.
Among My Souvenirs, oil on linen, 48 x 36, 2004
Fte Champtre, oil on linen, 36 x 48, 2011
(opposite)

HIN - In 1964 you studied for one year at the School of the Art Institute of
Chicago and then transferred to Indiana University where you received
your BA. What difference did you find in the approach to art and art
education?
AU - I returned to Indiana University because I could not afford to remain
at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. However, I had not taken
enough courses to be able to see a difference in art school as opposed to
university art education. After I started teaching I have taught at an art
school and was then very happy to return to the university.
My experience with art school students is that they are easily swayed
by the current ideologies of their instructors. University students, in my
opinion, are more critical, more open minded, and easier to work with.
But, of course, I have taught many, many more of the latter.
HIN - What teachers played a role in your development?
AU - In middle school there was an art teacher, Mr. Cohant, who made
a difference.
HIN - In 1967 you received your MA from Northwestern University?
What was your major?
AU - I took the painting courses while there and even wrote a short
thesis, Formal Change Through Color Change, for an MA in painting.
I never did finish that degree but went on to the direct PhD program in
art history.
My area was the history of printmaking and drawing and I specialized in
the influence of the long forward shadow of the Industrial Revolution. My
doctoral dissertation, Topography and a New Realism, offers substantial
proof that the English anticipated the ideas of the Impressionists as early
as the 1780s. My researches necessitated a lot of study of technique
books which led to my trying things out.
Whether On Idas Shady Brow, oil on linen, 48 x 60, 2015

HIN - In 1964 you studied for one year at the School of the Art Institute of
Chicago and then transferred to Indiana University where you received
your BA. What difference did you find in the approach to art and art
education?
AU - I returned to Indiana University because I could not afford to remain
at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. However, I had not taken
enough courses to be able to see a difference in art school as opposed to
university art education. After I started teaching I have taught at an art
school and was then very happy to return to the university.
My experience with art school students is that they are easily swayed
by the current ideologies of their instructors. University students, in my
opinion, are more critical, more open minded, and easier to work with.
But, of course, I have taught many, many more of the latter.
HIN - What teachers played a role in your development?
AU - In middle school there was an art teacher, Mr. Cohant, who made
a difference.
HIN - In 1967 you received your MA from Northwestern University?
What was your major?
AU - I took the painting courses while there and even wrote a short
thesis, Formal Change Through Color Change, for an MA in painting.
I never did finish that degree but went on to the direct PhD program in
art history.
My area was the history of printmaking and drawing and I specialized in
the influence of the long forward shadow of the Industrial Revolution. My
doctoral dissertation, Topography and a New Realism, offers substantial
proof that the English anticipated the ideas of the Impressionists as early
as the 1780s. My researches necessitated a lot of study of technique
books which led to my trying things out.
Vanitas 10, oil on linen, 36 x 24, 2014

HIN - Who were some of your teachers at Northwestern

University who played an important role in your development
and why?
AU -All my professors there were exiting. But I was fortunate
to have two who were also philosophers, in their own way,
G. Haydn Huntley and George Cohen.
Huntley was a brilliant Renaissance scholar. He taught me
how to prepare my lectures andtaught me how to deal with
problems one encounters in the lecture hall. He told me that
students immediately forget 70% of the material, so just use
the 30% that they will retain.To this day I can still remember
the substance of the courses that I took with him.
George Cohen was amazing. He was a major Chicago artist,
a surrealist, and a great wit. I remember he said, in a class
critique, Dont assume that because thinking is visual, it
is unconscious. From that precept I learned to retrace my
thoughts in painting. This has really helped me to develop
my work.
HIN - During your education, what artists influenced you and
are they still interest to you?
AU - Corot, Raphael, Tintoretto, Constable, Watteau, all the
Dutch painters.
Leland Bell, James McGarrell, Beckman, Kandinsky, Nell
Blaine, Fairfield Porter, Willard Midgette, Sidney Goodman
and yes, they are still of interest.

New Years Day, oil on linen, 48 x 36, 2000

Landscape With Paramedic Helicopter, oil on linen, 24 x 36, 2002
(opposite)

HIN - Almost all your paintings are complex compositions. filled with many figures in
very dramatic poses. How do you begin these paintings? Do you work directly from life
or do you make drawing studies or use photographs to help you in articulating a pose or
composition?
AU -Elizabeth Bowen said she begins a novel with a vision of a room. That struck me
because I begin thinking of some sort of space. Then, the figures are conceptualized.
I go through my life study sketches, the 30 and 60 second poses, for ideas. I like
transitional poses, unstable actions as one moves from one stable pose to another, Then,
I try to envisage how the figures would relate spacially, and compose the action. I use
up reams of tracing paper for this. As I observe the people who are to be painted, I make
adjustments people move so differently. Finally, I am ready to work from life. I use
myself for everything except faces.
I do not use photographs because what I need to observe color, space relationships,
structure and foreshortening, the camera cannot give me. I make oil sketches of the
faces of the people to be portrayed. Once one does this, one understands the structure
and can represent the individual from any point of view. One could not do this from
photographs. I do use photographics to document detail that need not be sketched such
as architectural ornamentation.. On the flyer for the show, I am using a photograph a
photograph of one of Mel Leipzigs paintings to remember such details in that painting.
HIN - In watching you paint, I noticed that you select and arrange a large selection
of colors on your palette. Why so many colors? and what role does color play in your
work?
AU - I have an innate superstition: The colors of things and even the air between them
seem composite and infinitely various, and finding some combination of pigment colors
that corresponds to the way these colors relate to each other seems to me necessary for
the painting to be true. I would not call myself a colorist. I am one of those people who
resists separating value from color and consequently use color to structure form and
place things in space.
But the relationship of color to color in my work seems more important than the identity
of a hue. Sometimes I think that if the relationships remained constant (though of course
they wouldnt) other hues could be substituted for the ones in place without changing
the painting. I envy the people like Bonnard and more recently, Violet Baxter, who can
make particular hues beautiful in themselves.

HIN - In looking at your work it seems to me that quite a few images ar inspired or make
reference to literature and especially myths. What attracts you to this subject matter?
AU - I have always been a reader, a novel addict. I feel like George Cohen when he said
that novels, at times, seemed more real than his own life. But, in novels, the authors
create characters. In the visual arts, narrative tends to be more autobiographical. I want
to avoid this, by invoking a frame of reference that makes it possible for the viewer to
understand the narrative and relate it to their own experience. Classic mythology seems
more concerned with the dramas of mundane life than other belief systems and can
provide a primal but neutral bridge between the personal and the general. James McNeill
Mesple does something similar.
HIN - The surface of your paintings reminds me of De Kooning or even Soutine. Do
these artists interest you. Or any others?
AU - Actually, Soutine and De Kooning are the artists I now look to most frequently
along with Mel Leipzig, Sydney Goodman, Don Perlis, Jim McGarrel, Robert Barns,
Beckmann and Robert Birmelin.
HIN - Last year I saw you painting in on site inone of the exhibition rooms oof the New
Jersey State Museum. Can you tell us about the experience? Did it differ from other on
site work that you have done?
AU - It was my only public project where I was allowed to work in the middle of the
collection. I would never have thought it, but working in a space populated by art is a bit
eerie. The project was also different in that it tangentially involved another artist.
Painting in the galleries is an ongoing event at the New Jersey State Museum and this
started with Mel Leipzig and me painting each other. Maybe for this reason the narrative
which started to be about people painting in a gallery (and essentially about the need we
all have to deal with reality through facsimile) morphed into a narrative about Mel and
his wife, or maybe not. The ghostly presence of other people in each individuals life is
an ongoing theme of mine.

Stargazers, oil on linen, 36 x 24, 2012

Wind Sun And Snow, oil on linen, 48 x 46, 2012.
(opposite)

HIN - We are in a time period when artists are using computers to

create virtual reality. What are your feelings about this? and why are
you still creating paintings in a traditional way?
AU - Art is about life and will always embrace anything that is
major in shaping the life of its time. To think that artists would not
use the computer would be like being surprised that artists made use
of linear perspective. There will be cybernetic art, and some of it
will be wonderful. However, what impresses me is limited to virtual
reality (even in games), and special effects in film .
As far as pictures are concerned, my interest lies in the tension
between conventions of representation and the individuals eccentric
analysis of seen reality. Straight pictures from the computer bore me.
Easel painting may indeed become peripheral, like glass tesserae
mosaic making, but as of now it is still the most efficient means of
doing what I want to do.
HIN - You have taught both art history and studio art What role has
teaching played n your development?
AU - Teaching was and is crucial to my identity, largely because of
my feelings about the university which, I think , is a module of human
society at its best. Offering a component of the university education
to students is emotionally very important to me. I see myself not
as training future artists but as teaching people to communicate
with each other through visual imaging. Once a student starts to do
this, its amazing how different and interesting each persons point
of view becomes. And since art is about life, the visual expression
of peoples minds as well as their faces, furnishes important raw
material for painting.

Late Flowers, oil on linen, 24 x 36, 2002

To Know, To Know My Fate, oil on linen, 38 x 46, 2003
(opposite left)
The Scribe, oil on linen, 34x 48, 2011
(opposite right)

Homage to Mel Leipzig, oil on linen, 54 x 66, 2015

Momento Mori Vii, oil on linen, 43x 70, 1987

Morning Comes to the Ukrainian Village, oil on linen, 32 x 38, 1999

The Guardian, oil on linen, 12 x 16, 2012

Audrey Ushenko

Member, National Academy of Design

1123 N. Damen Ave, Chicago, IL 60622 tel. 774 294-8075, 773 360 8877
ushenkoa@ipfw.edu audreyushenko.com

Education

1965-1968 Northwestern University, Evanston, IL

1978 PhD Art History

Present employment

1988 till now,: Indiana University Purdue University Ft. Wayne, IN

Professor of Art.

Public Painting Projects executed as Artist-in-Residence

Three year project funded by the Illinois Arts Concil, Thompson Center, State of Illinois Bldg.
The University of Chicago, Center for Advanced Madicine, Chicago, IL
Chautauqua Institution, Chautauqua, NY.
Indiana State Museum, Indianapolis, IN.
St. Louis University Museum of Art, St Louis, MO.
Brauer Mseum of Art, Valparaiso, IN.
Ft. Fort Wayne Museum of Art, Ft. Wayne, IN.

Publications: Authored

Audrey Ushenko, Audrey Ushenko, Olga Boznanska, Figurative Painter, encyclopedia

essay in the St. James Encyclopedia of Contemporary Women Artists, Detroit, 1999.

Publications about: Books

Cynthia Dantzic, One Hundred New York Artists, New York, Schiffer, 2006.
Stanley I Grand, Allegories an Myths, Southeast Missouri University, 2000.
St. James Encyclopedia of Contemporary Women Artists, Audrey Ushenko,
encyclopedia essay, Detroit, 1999.
Cynthia Dantzic, Design Dimensions, Prentice Hall, NY 1900
Still Life With Tiffany Lamp, oil on linen, 36 x 24, 2015

Publications about, reviews and essays in periodicals

Art in America. Jan 94, May 99, March 03.
Die Niew Welt der Kunst.(St. Petersburg, Russia), March 07.
Manhattan Arts Magazine, Jan 90,
American Artist, March 87, and various others.

Recent Solo Exhibition Record

Representative shows in major art centers
2011- Denise Bibro Fine Art, NY
2007 - Denis Bibro Fine Art, NY, NY,
2004 - Denise Bibro Fine Art, NY.
1993 - Yvonne Rapp Gallery, Louisville, KY.

Museums and Public Institutional Collections and acquisitions

Rinehart Music Center, IPFW, Ft Wayne, IN.

Immanuel Lutheran School, Valparaiso, IN.
St Louis University, Museum of Art 5 paintings installed.
National Academy of Design Museum. I am a member since 1992,
The Brauer Museum of Art, Valparaiso, IN.
Lincoln National Corporation, Ft. Wayne, IN.
Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY,
West Law Publishing Co, St. Paul, Minn. The Polish Museum of America, Chicago, IL
Illinois State Museum, Springfield, IL - JPMorgan Chase Chicago Corporate Collection.
Northwestern University, School of Communicable Disorders, Evanston, IL.
Minneapolis Museum of Art, Minneapolis, Minn.
Block Museum of Art, Evanston, IL

Video about

IPFW Featured Faculty. YouTube Audrey Ushenko

Video. Making it in the Midwest. Indiana State Museum, Artists Who Chose To Stay.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ijr_lLFJc9s (at 2:30)

Personal

Born in Princeton, New Jersey, 1945.

Married (S. M. Hartsay). One child, a daughter, Emily Hartsay.
Small Treasures, oil on linen, 26 x 24, 1994