‘Partly Cloudy Skies’ offers a contemplative view

The skies in Todd Mrozinski’s  show at Grove Gallery range from placidly tranquil to moody — maybe even a little tumultuous. 

The exhibition is called Partly Cloudy Skies: The Skyscape Series, and there are hundreds of pieces to look at, arranged salon style in a delightful array. The scale of the pieces, most of them ranging just a few inches on either side, seem to encourage close viewing. They are delicate studies of passing time, and while they are visually interesting, their backstory lends additional significance. 

The artist, Todd Mrozinski, has received much recognition for his work and is a past Pfister Hotel artist-in-residence. During his tenure there, he was noted for painting silhouettes of people, their shadows highlighted by luminous coronas of earthy and golden tones.

In this series of paintings, he continues the fascination with light but also introduces a new painting technique. Dispensing with a paintbrush, he instead used his fingers and whole hands for these pictures, finding it to be a way of engaging more closely with the image. It is quite an organic process and aligns with his visual translation of nature. 

The rather unusual nature of these paintings goes past the technique to the surfaces. Done on cast-off bits of construction lumber, they depict a horizontal moment of sky, although they were completed over a passing duration of time. 

Sitting on the roof of the Riverwest building where his studio is located, Mrozinski would observe the skies and paint, often working on multiple pieces during the course of a day. Eschewing the traditional palette, he put paint on top of a 5-gallon plastic bucket and applied it from there. The bucket, with its heavily caked and colorful surface, sets the stage for the exhibition as it is on display in the gallery’s storefront window.

Larger paintings and drawings too

Along with these recent, diminutive pieces, some comparatively monumental paintings of clouds are also on view. These were done by Mrozinski about a decade ago and follow more conventional practices, as they were painted on canvas with a brush. While sharing the same sense of luminosity with the later pieces, these have a presence of conscious grandeur rather than the mood of study and contemplation.

Tucked away in the back of the gallery is a lovely series of sky compositions in graphite. With varied types of pencils, paper and even powder, delicate clouds are reserved in the white of paper or shaped by the presence of an eraser. The tangible subject is made visible by the creation of a void in the tonal atmosphere. 

A sense of atmosphere is the focus of these paintings. Varied clouds float by and sunlight tinges edges with an array of colors, from golden light to crimson to weighty purple. The pictures offer a sensation of weather as well as time of day. Sometimes a rooftop, treetops or city skyline appears, but not often. For Mrozinski, the making of these pieces was something like a spiritual experience, and one where the images still recall a sense of time and mood. 

For the viewer, the works are a way of vicariously experiencing the ordinary celestial phenomenon of a day in concentrated form. This is a spectacle that we often miss, much less frequently enjoying an extended contemplation of the ever-changing scenery around us. Partly Cloudy Skies is an invitation to do that, as well as a reminder of what we’re missing outside the nearest window.