Nathan Rutkowski’s “The Flea,” is an acrylic on plastic trash bags. The artist uses recycled materials such as cardboard and plastic bags.
Artist Nathan Rutkowski’s solo exhibit, “Color and Sound,” is on display at Perkins Center for the Arts in Moorestown through Wednesday, April 30.
The exhibit features 35 of the artist’s pieces and they can be seen from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Monday through Friday and from noon to 4 p.m. on Saturday.
“A lot of artists who I’ve admired like Kandinsky (Walter, a Russian painter) and (Swiss German artist) Paul Klee, they were also musicians and they would talk about how a color is in relationship to a sound,” Rutkowski explained. “ … I do think about how a rough sound or an atonal sound will have a bright color in a rough mark, so with a lot of my paintings, the marks are pretty rough.
“I think about sound and the line, and if the line is jagged, it’s kind of like a jagged sound.”
Rutkowski, a Triton Regional High School alumnus, has been exhibiting his work since he was 16. He originally wanted to be a cartoonist, but after seeing the 1973 documentary “Painters Painting,” he sought to become tan artist.
According to Rutkowski’s artist statement, after graduating from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts he decided to try the surrealist techniques of automatic drawing. That led him to making larger works on paper in acrylic with automatic drawings as a starting point and a figure or portrait included with them.
Recycled materials such as cardboard and plastic bags with irregular perimeters and surfaces were introduced with his imagery, and his rough marks and surfaces create a unified experience.
“The element that I’m really attracted to the most is line, the lines that I create,” Rutkowski noted. “I really like to make linear marks and sometimes I’m aware that I overdo the lines, so I’ll cover that up and then I’ll bring it back, so it’s kind of like a back and forth. When I say “marks,” that’s essentially what I’m thinking about, those lines that I’m creating, how active they are and how subtle they are, going back and forth to create.”
When he first started exhibiting his work, Rutkowski recalled, he was more afraid, but now he feels comfortable with things not working out and with failure. He’s also a lot more comfortable with putting himself out there. You always care about the audience, he observed, but at the end of the day, he’s passionate about creating his work and pushing himself.
Rutkowski’s advice for other artists? Don’t be afraid of your ugly ducklings – they’ll grow into swans.
“You have to take that thing and push it further and further and just set it aside,” he advised, “because you never know when you’ll go back to it and you’ll have the solution that it needed later in life … Work hard; there’s no shortcuts. It’s just work and that’s really it.
“Don’t give up,” Rutkowski added. “Don’t give up on a particular piece. Maybe just set it aside and don’t listen to anybody.”
