ELAINE KOWALSKY
Elaine Kowalsky was an artist based in London. Her untimely death in September 2005 has been a great loss to her family and to her many close friends and colleagues. The 22 installments from her Diary were a wonderful and witty contribution to n.paradoxa which expressed much of her energy, passions, social awareness and sense of humour.
She wrote the Diary for n.paradoxa anonymously. We discussed many times the reasons for doing this column and for keeping her identity secret: primarily to separate her own career from the Diary's playful and witty fantasies about the aspirations and difficulties of being a well-connected woman artist (of a certain age) struggling to gain recognition in London's sexist, ageist and highly competitive art world. A sample of the Diary was broadcast once on Canadian radio. We both had aspirations that it would be widely read and well-received and could gain a broader audience.
Elaine was a prolific artist working across a number of mediums, but particularly in artists' books and prints. She had a studio in Robinson Road in the East End of London. She was the Chair of the Board for the Designer and Artists Copyright Society and a strong defender of artists' rights.
Her exhibitions and works are shown on her website.
Tales from Marian and Dorothy: A Series of monoprints by Elaine Kowalsky was shown from September 6 - October 28 in the Surgeon’s & Physicians’ Sitting Room, Front corridor, The Royal London Hospital, Whitechapel, London E1. These works were also shown at the Freud Museum in 2000 and a small catalogue with an essay by Katy Deepwell was produced to accompany this earlier exhibition.
She had been selected for SKETCH 2005, an exhibition of artists’ sketchbooks at Rabley Contemporary Drawing Centre, 24 June – 24 July, Seven Seven Contemporary Art, London 23 September – 9 October. It will be part of the Edinburgh Fringe in 2006. The selected work was the sketchbook North that formed her one-woman show at Platform Gallery, London 2004 and can be seen on her web site.
The Editor of n.paradoxa
Katy Deepwell
Copyright © : n.paradoxa, September 2005
N.Paradoxa : Issue No. 19, 2005