It's our first official weekend back after a little winter break and we're thrilled for you all to come by and see Vivian Polak's beautiful artwork and photographs adorning our walls this Spring.
March 13th - June 10th
About Vivian Polak
My Work
I’ve been creating photographs and making art for most of my life. My focus has always been the interplay of the inner life we all experience and the natural world around us, and I find myself often seeking patterns, details and hidden connections. I explore the physical locations and inner places I’ve lived in and visited—external and internal landscapes. I seek to touch the feeling of the space we occupy in time and to understand how a space, or a detail in nature, remembers and is touched by the people who have visited, even long after they have moved through.
I build each work with layers, with every layer representing a different experience of time and place. Working with moving shadows and shifts of light and dark, I look to capture moments as we move towards them, as we occupy them, and as they move past us. I think about how we remember, and how we are remembered.
I often start with a photograph that sets a reality on one plane, at one point in time. I then add my own ideas and visions (manipulating the image, adding paint, ink or other media) to explore what might have come before and what might come after—in each case seeking to weaken the bond with the “reality” reference of the photograph, moving closer to the inner compositions that we all experience in life.
My Background
I was born in New York City, and grew up on Long Island and in a small town on the coast of Belgium—two places where the combination of water and flat land makes for extraordinary light, big skies and distant horizons.
After many years of working primarily in photography, I have continued to explore how to extend my vision by adding to some of my photographs various elements of color and collage, as well as drawing, painting (primarily with inks and watercolors) and printmaking.
I have studied at The Art Students League, the International Center of Photography, the New York Studio School and in workshops and studio classes at the Art Barge in Napeague.
My works are part of private collections in the United States and France, and have been shown at The Cheryl Hazan Gallery in Tribeca, at Clic Gallery, Folio East and Ashawagh Hall in East Hampton and at Sylvester & Co in Amagansett and Sag Harbor. My works are also featured in a book published in 2020 entitled “Hampton Artists: The Current Wave” by photographer Jaimie Lopez, with text by Coco Myers.