ShukovskyArt.com 
 The Unique Art Of Yvonne & Hal Shukovsky 
 

About Us


The artists are husband and wife (for over 50 years) who each create their art using different approaches but similar visions. We both overlap in our interests in finding and combining disparate materials, found objects and imagery as building blocks for our creations. Very often we share the same images or take photographs at the same location where we look for subjects that are normally "overlooked".

We lived in the greater Boston area for a number of years and exhibited with a number of Art Associations as well as at other venues including a two person exhibit at the Decordova Museum in Lincoln, MA and a three person exhibit at University Place in Cambridge, MA.

  About Yvonne                        yshukovsky@gmail.com

In my oil pastels and mixed media paintings I want to capture a sense of the outdoors without being “on site” so as to create both a mood and suggestion of nature. In the paintings on canvas I explore subtle relationships of tone and color as I buildup layers of texture. I prefer to use soft tones and a quiet light.

Painting in a smaller format creates an intimacy between the work and the viewer as one must look closely and interact on a more personal level with the work. Painting from memory gives me a more intimate view and original interpretation. These small pieces very often evolve so as to give the illusion of large landscapes having deep space.  As I am in a meditative mode I allow the work to take on a life of its own. A landscape may   evolve into a seascape and I allow it “to be” and I feel that I am in that space.

Hopefully my work will “speak” to the viewer.      

In my photography, a local transfer station (town dump) and a local repair yard for heavy construction machinery has become my haunt - a gray drab, cluttered place becomes a beautiful place filled with magical shapes and color. Looking through the viewfinder I focus on details that are so easily overlooked. When one looks at a pile of junk there is the appearance of chaos and one can not see that there are regions of luminous color and shapes forming intriguing compositions.  I use the camera to get close to my subject so as to narrow my field of vision and thereby shutout the external chatter of the world. This becomes a form of meditation for me as chaos and chatter, both external and internal are silenced. This process hopefully transforms a collection of discarded materials into a magical composition of form, texture and color.

 I have exhibited widely in the greater Boston area, New Hampshire and various national competitions. My work is in many private collections nationally and internationally. I am a juried member of the New England Watercolor Society, a distinguished artist  of the Concord Art Association (Mass) as well as the New Hampshire Women's Caucus for the Arts and various art associations. I attended the Ohio University-School of Fine Arts, Boston University, B.A. and the Decordova Museum School in Lincoln, Massachusetts.

 About Hal                               hshukovsky@gmail.com

My academic training as a scientist (ScD @ MIT) overshadowed my strong interests in art and photography during my college years. Upon completion of my academic studies I devoted more and more time to my artistic interests, especially to the art of photography. In 1991 I migrated to the art of digital collage and digital photography. This has allowed me to pursue the challenge of combining and integrating a variety images, textures, materials and found objects into a visual statement. I have found that the computer is an excellent tool for the creation of collages using a variety of layered imagery. The digital layering process allows for layer modification, layer masking, and creative blending between layers.

 I have been using timeless art images from the past five hundred years in concert with contemporary imagery to create many of my eclectic visual statements. Frequently, I use imagery as a visual metaphor for the state of the human condition. I enjoy searching for the harmony between seemingly opposite pairings such as the contemporary and the classic, the realistic and the abstract, the pristine and the worn, the cherished and the neglected and so forth.   I seek to have the viewer linger when looking at my work and to engage them on any of several levels.

 During the many years that we lived in the greater Boston area, I exhibited at the Cambridge Art Association,  the Concord Art Association where I was designated as a Distinguished Artist, the Sudbury Art Association, and the New Hampshire Art Association.   More recently my work has been recognized at the 2014 Selections Exhibit at the Newport, NH Library Arts Center, the 2002 Currier Gallery of Art NHAA Juried Exhibit, the 2001 Joan Dunfey Juried Exhibit in Portsmouth, NH, the 2001 Sharon Arts Center Biennial Exhibit in Peterborough, NH , the  1999 New Hampshire Institute of Art Biennial in Manchester, NH, and the Lotte Jacoby Award for best in show at the 1999 Parfitt Photography Exhibit held at the Robert Lincoln Levy Gallery in Portsmouth, NH.