Allison Schulnik paints rejects. Caked in thickly applied impasto, her fantastical characters appear to be melting off the canvas, residing somewhere between their world and ours.
Combining the grotesque with the sentimental, Schulnik has said of her work – “I allow my imagination to revel in its own world, where thickly sculpted oils, earthly fact and blatant fiction collide to form images of tragedy, farce and raw beauty.” With recurrent motifs like – hobo clowns, possums, raccoon’s, down and outs and animals both cute and fearsome, resonate a certain clunky pathos. In a nod to the vulnerability of her misshapen cast, gloopy bouquets are sometimes painted as gifts in their honor.
It’s not just painting that Schulnik marks with her own, distinctive style. A graduate in animation studies from CalArts, she also produces acclaimed short movies featuring the characters and settings she often depicts in her paintings. She’s a dab hand, too, at ceramics, a perfect complement to the tactile, encrusted surfaces of her canvases.
From boho hobos to leering simians, there’s a fearlessness and immediacy to Schulnik’s work that’s hard not to love!
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