Splendid Afternoon Painting

Celebrated for her style of bold impasto landscapes and occasional figurative works, Theresa’s artwork transfixes the viewer through a dynamic sense of color and atmosphere that explores what it means to connect to nature during our highly saturated digital age. Theresa Rykaczewski is an American painter and non-profit gallery director in Atlantic Beach, Florida at Word Revolt Art Gallery and Adjunct Faculty of Visual Art at Jacksonville University. Her latest series, “Vibrant Forest,” depicts various local and subtropical parks with inspiration drawn from virtual reality and Impressionism. The work seeks to find a balance between mixed desires for real utopian escapes in nature versus the digital preference for luminous hyper color. Previous series explore similar theoretical threads with the addition of figures and objects lost in nostalgia within the atmospheric marsh landscape, objects that are signifiers of history and changes in work and play over time. Theresa’s father, a botanical scientist, instilled her with a deep respect for nature, with a librarian mother from Cajun Louisiana who encouraged her to explore her French roots and follow the passion of Impressionist style painting, the landscape emerged as a formative influence for Theresa, who grew up St. Louis enjoying lush forest hiking trails with family and friends. Theresa Rykaczewski holds a BFA degree from the University of Missouri St. Louis with honors and a minor in art history as well as an MFA from Jacksonville University in painting, graduating as a member of Phi Kappa Phi. She has been painting and teaching art classes for the last ten years including community based and professional skills workshops, university and museum lectures. She specializes in traditional oil and impasto techniques for landscape and figurative work. Theresa has exhibited in over 40 juried exhibitions and curated over 25 exhibitions of artwork nationally, with private and corporate collections and a long record of sales, events and publications with a penchant for contemporary art, history and cultivating a vibrant arts community.