Magdalena Pawlowski

About

Born in Detroit, Michigan, to parents who immigrated from Poland in the late 1980s, Magdalena Pawlowski spent her childhood on a windy island off the coast of Cape Cod, Massachusetts. She received her MFA from the University of Connecticut and her BFA from the Lyme Academy College of Fine Arts in Old Lyme, Conn., and studied at the Corcoran College of Art + Design in Washington, D.C. Pawlowski creates painstakingly detailed visual hybrids of personal memories, entrancing patterns, and her intimate surroundings. Awarded the Artistic Fellowship from the Connecticut Office of the Arts in 2023, she has participated in numerous exhibitions and fairs, including Spring/Break Art Show in NYC. Her work has been most recently published in Tomorrow’s Talent Vol.III.

Excerpt from Yesterday Happens, Tomorrow’s Already Here, by Samara Pearlstein:

Egg tempera, Magdalena Pawlowski's medium of choice, was the primary paint in use in Europe up to the early Renaissance period, when it was supplanted by oil paint. A famously fast-drying paint that resists easy storage, egg tempera can be as precise as it is fussy, and lends itself readily to intricate work. Pawlowski's paintings depict spaces where staid ordinary objects and personal memories hybridize with almost hallucinatory colors, patterns, and details, siting the scenes firmly in the tradition of still life painting while destabilizing the represented spaces and allowing the objects to stand in for personal reflections on tenderness, anxiety, precarity, and more.

Curriculum Vitae:
Education:
University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT- MFA in painting 2018-2021 
Lyme Academy College of Fine Arts , Old Lyme, CT- BFA 2011-2014
Corcoran School of the Arts and Design, Washington, DC- Studied 2009-2011

Awards, Grants, Residencies:

2023 Artist Fellowship Award, Connecticut Office of the Arts
2021 Joan and George Cole MFA Award, The University of Connecticut
2021 ZARATAN AIR Residency, Lisbon, Portugal 
2021 Semifinalist, Fulbright U.S. Student Program, Poland
2020/2021 Rhoda Shivers Memorial Award in the Arts 
2020 Wood/Raith Living Trust Fellowship
2019 Kaaren Hale Residency, Nantucket, MA
2009- 2018 Member of Artist Association of Nantucket
2013 Wardlaw Grant, Lyme Academy College of Fine Arts
2007 People’s Choice Award, Artist Association of Nantucket

Publications:

2023 Tomorrow's Talent Vol. III, Booooooom
2021, The Grief Project Zine, Counterproof Press
2020, Long River River, University of Connecticut

Collections:

The William Benton Museum of Art, Storrs, CT

Select Exhibitions: 

2024
Next Gen, Cove Street Arts, Portland, Maine

2023
Connecticut College Visiting Faculty Exhibition, Joanne Toor Cummings Gallery, New London, CT
Yesterday Happens Today, Tomorrow’s Already Here, Jewett Art Gallery, Wellesley College, MA
In Light of Color, Lyet Gallery, Elizabethtown College, PA
Trove, Deanna Evans Projects, New York, New York
Nor’easterly 2, Katzman Contemporary Projects, Dover, NH

2022
Carapace, Gallery of NWT, Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, Canada
Still, Stay Home Gallery, Paris, Tennessee
Notes From the Interior, Alexey Von Schlippe Gallery, Avery Point, CT

2021
SPRING/BREAK Art Show, New York, New York
Heads/Tails, Atlantic Gallery, New York, New York
Froth, Jill Krutick Gallery, West Chester, New York
Folk Is Art, WomensWork.art, Poughkeepsie, New York
Emerging Artist Exhibition, Cambridge Arts Association, Cambridge, MA 
Sour Milk, MFA Thesis Exhibition, The William Benton Museum of Art, Storrs, CT

2020
COLD HEELS, a SHIM Art Network Exhibition on Artsy

2019
Westport Emerging Artists Exhibition, Westport, CT
Study Sessions II, Collective 131
Being Without Being, Alexey von Schlippe Gallery, Avery Point, CT