Kip Kowalski

Royal Oak MI

GIFTFIG
Painting
Artist Statement
My work is an audacious and blasphemous satire of human ignorance and apathy that confronts the absurdities I find in many contemporary religious beliefs. I tackle biblical lore that is celebrated as fact over the findings of empirical science, such as the denial (held by over 50% of the populace) that evolution is real. My work is also a reaction to the pervasive attitude in many secular and non-secular societies, including our own, that women are the lesser gender. I use my work to mock and challenge these follies - which are passed down from generation to generation - drawing and painting the comically grotesque and the obscenely ugly to create a narrative that questions these preposterous teachings using a surreal mix of metaphors, visual distortions and slapstick humor. I believe that this ignorance causes suffering and despair on personal (hatred) and global (war) levels. This grotesquery may cause uneasiness in the viewer; not because of the deformed imagery itself, but because the subject matter disturbs – and questions – the viewer’s conscious beliefs. kipkowalski.blogspot.com