Wendy Rader-Konofalski is an artist based in Kirkland, Washington. She regularly shows her work at venues in Seattle and the Eastside. She has twice shown her work at the Polish Home Association Art wall. Her medium is acrylic on canvas often using collage and mixed media materials. She paints abstract works and landscapes as well as mixed media works with inks and collage on paper. Recently she has begun to experiment with water colors on paper. She is known for her colorful palette, and energetic and bold brush strokes. Her landscapes often push the borders between the natural and the abstract.
Wendy started painting quite suddenly later in life in 2021. She retired in 2018 from a career in labor advocacy. She will tell you that her artistic breakthrough despite no training, and no particular artistic experience, may be due to oxygen deprivation to her brain during a brush with death and seven weeks in the hospital in 2019. “It sounds bizarre, but perhaps that experience worked a form of magic on my brain that opened up a portal into parts of my creativity that I never knew existed. It also may have altered my sense of time as an essential partner in the urgency of the moment.”
You can catch up with Wendy at the Polish Home restaurant, her exhibitions, or the Seattle Polish Film Festival.
