Andrea Kowch‘s stirring acrylic paintings combine both earnest reflections on the Western experience and surrealism. Her latest works, primarily focused on female subjects, place that discontent against rustic backdrops. Mixing in elements of nature, she’s able to make unexpected connections.
American artists — from the painters of the Hudson River School to the influential Andrew Wyeth — have long depicted this country’s vast landscape as simultaneously a place of lonely desolation and of awe-inspiring grandeur. Following in this tradition, Andrea Kowch creates gorgeous and eerie acrylic paintings of open-skied pastoral landscapes. Inspired by a deep fascination with the natural world, Kowch’s works also tap into a common feeling of uneasiness many of us have toward the American rural – a place that is iconic for its beauty but that is also often associated with tedium, isolation and a clinging to negative aspects of the country’s past.