Cindy Pacyk's Artist Biography 2005

Cindy Pacyk was born in Chicago Illinois. She grew up in Chicago's Northwest suburbs where her experiences of growing up in a developing area impacted her artwork greatly. Cindy's work deals with the pain of growing and the triumphs of success. The colors and forms are a direct impact of her upbringing, personality and interests. Although much of her work seems to depict landscapes the landscapes she depicts are organic and unnatural, she play with this dichotomy in much of her work.

There is a large emphasis on texture in her work which comes from her familial background. Her great-grandmother, who lived through the majority of her upbringing, was a seamstress and would always emphasize the quality of fabric. Her great-grandmother would encourage her to touch the fabric of clothing in stores and this continues today while when Cindy shops in search of pleasing textures. Her grandmothers both worked with yarn and would create beautiful textures in vibrant colors. These textures can clearly be seen in the patterns Cindy uses in her work. These experiences with her family members clearly influenced the textures, colors and patterns in Cindy's work.

The forms she works with are often organic due to the fact that as a child Cindy spent hours exploring the garden her mother tended. As a child Cindy spent hours exploring the farm field behind her family's house. While exploring she closely inspected the weeds growing on a hill dividing the farm field and her backyard. She extracts the forms from those early childhood memories of insects, floral forms, leaves and other natural objects. She still finds herself enthralled with nature and its ever intriguing contents.

She manipulates traditional landscapes in order to allow the viewer to experience them through more mangled and organic perspectives; which in turn allow them to see the influences of her work.