Local Artist Buzz, Inez Andrucyk

Local Artist Buzz, Inez Andrucyk

By Sonia Lee Garber

Inez Andrucyk invites me to her home in Mohegan Lake and we stroll around her house while talking with cool drinks in hand. She shows me both her summer and winter art studios, one upstairs and one downstairs. It is summer when we are talking and she is working in her downstairs studio which is large, airy, sprawled out, and chock full of art.  

Andrucyk uses bold color in her artwork, always striving to achieve a balance.  This also goes for the kind of person that she is: bold and colorful, yet always trying to achieve balance in her day-to-day life.  She admits to her struggle with the monochromatic color pallete.

“I’ve tried to create balance with black and gray but it often becomes depressing” says Andrucyk.  The colors Andrucyk uses in her artwork are joyful, and she is a testament to the ability of creating beauty, even out of darkness and pain.  Andrucyk’s son, Reid, passed at age 22, due to the opioid epidemic. Her eldest son is well and has a family. “I try hard not to tell them what to do,”, she says. 

She goes on to talk about her art, activism, and coping with her younger son’s passing.

“I’m a member of The Whitney and they did this thing online about artists who take carnival colors or…they go a different way in activism instead of confronting something head on…it’s trying to balance everything out, you know…instead of being linear…like something’s happening to you this way and you react…instead of being reactive or proactive, it’s more, trying to relax into it.  It’s like when you have a pain and you relax into the pain instead of fighting it, because fighting it…doesn’t get you anywhere.  It just hurts. It keeps hurting…you know, I was an activist too because I lost my son to the drug epidemic…I’m using the art now to try to create some beauty …some sort of way to balance that with what’s going on in activism.”

Andrucyk has been studying Buddhism for the last five years “pretty intensely”, she says.  Her process in creating artwork can be considered a spiritual practice, as it brings her to places that are “not necessarily rooted in concepts, but more of a place of awareness.” Says Andrucyk.  

Fittingly we talk about how ego can get in the way of things, and I admire her tenacity at learning how to push it out of the way when creating artwork and living life.  

Andrucyk talks about interactions with others in her community.

“So you have to work with a lot of artists and people and you know, Peekskill has got all of those people to work with. It’s beautiful. I know so many people are beautiful, and when many people work together egos sometimes get hurt. They misunderstand each other 99% of the time. So I try to analyze it. What do I have to do with it? How can I change myself and let my ego go?”

Inez Andrucyk’s  artistic resume is plentiful. Andrucyk has had one person exhibitions at places such as: the Weill Cornell West Side Gallery in NYC, ArtsWestchester in White Plains, NY and the Macy Gallery, in NYC, many local libraries and venues, just to name a few.   Additionally, she has been in many group exhibitions with her paintings, sculptures, and public installations such as, at the Tilly Foster Farm Sculpture Walk in Brewster, NY, the Westchester Community College Gallery in Peekskill, and the Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Gallery.  She’s also had video, poetry, and art performances, murals and residencies, and has had her work featured in many publications and several news shows over the years.  

And Andrucyk is very involved in the local arts community.  She is on the board of Collaborative Concepts putting together the outdoor exhibition of Tilly Foster Farm in Brewster and recently served an eight- month service on the board of the Peekskill Arts Alliance receiving a grant from Artwestchester for Painting Poetry and Music. She’s also a member of the Whitney Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Katonah Museum. 

Andrucyk recently installed her Tilly Foster Farm sculpture, “Positivity Network Tower” on Reid’s birthday, August 25^th.

“…I’m trying to make it as beautiful as I can… he was a really fun-loving person.  I mean, it’s a real loss, but there’s a lot of losses.  And part of it comes from also realizing I was suffering, and I went to the Buddhist Monastery at Woodstock where the main study is The Four Noble Truths:  Suffering, the Causes of Suffering, the end of Suffering, and then there’s Nirvana… because you know, you figure [things] out, but the thing is, then I realized… [in] American culture we’re running away all the time from what we suffer instead of acknowledging it, relaxing into it, then transforming it.  And you can find beauty, you know? 

And I meditate on my own petty emotions, such as jealousy.  I used to not admit it to myself.  Now I think it’s just habitual thoughts creating feelings. It is really just the world of thinking and creating unnecessary pain for self and others…but things are easier now. It helps being 70 and not having to be responsible, at a job or, um, with your kids and trying to do the best job which is nearly impossible… and I totally messed up with my beloved Reid… of course, I always blame myself. But when I realize the brevity of life itself, I try to spread, perhaps recycle the joy and love that was Reid in the awareness of the gifts of each moment and each breath.”