Cole Bespalko, "Comfort Food"
Oil on Canvas
42 x 36”
May 2022
These works included in Eat Me, are part of my work on my undergraduate degree at Pratt Institute. Comfort Food is an exploration of transformation through the experience of feeling pathetic. I use combinations of impasto and washes to create a slow intensity and a movement of form. In Television, I am thinking about an overbearing relationship between two parties that fundamentally changes the way they engage with their space. Television is part of a broader series that I was working on for my junior year of college. Throughout these works I have used food as a symbol and as a grounding form of consistency. Food gives us the opportunity to slow down and to consider our bodies. Food also gives us the opportunity to witness ourselves transform.
STATEMENT
My work for the past year has investigated moments of metamorphosis between physical, emotional, and spiritual states and how light, shadow, tone, and edge can capture the confusion and horror of these transformations. This concept is personal in the erotics of its motion as well as within my own spiritual beliefs system. The way that humans interact with one another with something as simple as a look has the ability to transform us emotionally or spiritually in the way that we conceptualize ourselves. I find myself searching quiet within these transformations, searching for a resting place in the consistency that I am hoping is revealed. I am interested specifically in energetic and spiritual transformation which I explore using light and expressive mark and impasto paint application to create a sense of atmosphere in my works. Oil paint, in its beauty and movement, has a unique way of capturing and exploring separation between what is still and moving as well as what is solid and what is liquid. This allows me to explore these ideas in a more literal way as well. In this literal sense, I am highly influenced by horror movies such as those by Chronenburg, David Lynch, and Ari Aster as well as existentialist writers like Kafka, Jean Paul Sartre, and Camus. Additionally, I find myself interested in the visuals of photography and theater. In these works, I attempt to explore the magic that lies within these intimate moments of change.
BIO
Cole Bespalko is an oil painter based out of Brooklyn, New York and born in Chicago, Illinois. He is currently working on his undergraduate degree in painting at Pratt Institute and hopes to pursue an MFA.
Oil on Canvas
42 x 36”
May 2022
These works included in Eat Me, are part of my work on my undergraduate degree at Pratt Institute. Comfort Food is an exploration of transformation through the experience of feeling pathetic. I use combinations of impasto and washes to create a slow intensity and a movement of form. In Television, I am thinking about an overbearing relationship between two parties that fundamentally changes the way they engage with their space. Television is part of a broader series that I was working on for my junior year of college. Throughout these works I have used food as a symbol and as a grounding form of consistency. Food gives us the opportunity to slow down and to consider our bodies. Food also gives us the opportunity to witness ourselves transform.
STATEMENT
My work for the past year has investigated moments of metamorphosis between physical, emotional, and spiritual states and how light, shadow, tone, and edge can capture the confusion and horror of these transformations. This concept is personal in the erotics of its motion as well as within my own spiritual beliefs system. The way that humans interact with one another with something as simple as a look has the ability to transform us emotionally or spiritually in the way that we conceptualize ourselves. I find myself searching quiet within these transformations, searching for a resting place in the consistency that I am hoping is revealed. I am interested specifically in energetic and spiritual transformation which I explore using light and expressive mark and impasto paint application to create a sense of atmosphere in my works. Oil paint, in its beauty and movement, has a unique way of capturing and exploring separation between what is still and moving as well as what is solid and what is liquid. This allows me to explore these ideas in a more literal way as well. In this literal sense, I am highly influenced by horror movies such as those by Chronenburg, David Lynch, and Ari Aster as well as existentialist writers like Kafka, Jean Paul Sartre, and Camus. Additionally, I find myself interested in the visuals of photography and theater. In these works, I attempt to explore the magic that lies within these intimate moments of change.
BIO
Cole Bespalko is an oil painter based out of Brooklyn, New York and born in Chicago, Illinois. He is currently working on his undergraduate degree in painting at Pratt Institute and hopes to pursue an MFA.
Oil on Canvas
42 x 36”
May 2022
These works included in Eat Me, are part of my work on my undergraduate degree at Pratt Institute. Comfort Food is an exploration of transformation through the experience of feeling pathetic. I use combinations of impasto and washes to create a slow intensity and a movement of form. In Television, I am thinking about an overbearing relationship between two parties that fundamentally changes the way they engage with their space. Television is part of a broader series that I was working on for my junior year of college. Throughout these works I have used food as a symbol and as a grounding form of consistency. Food gives us the opportunity to slow down and to consider our bodies. Food also gives us the opportunity to witness ourselves transform.
STATEMENT
My work for the past year has investigated moments of metamorphosis between physical, emotional, and spiritual states and how light, shadow, tone, and edge can capture the confusion and horror of these transformations. This concept is personal in the erotics of its motion as well as within my own spiritual beliefs system. The way that humans interact with one another with something as simple as a look has the ability to transform us emotionally or spiritually in the way that we conceptualize ourselves. I find myself searching quiet within these transformations, searching for a resting place in the consistency that I am hoping is revealed. I am interested specifically in energetic and spiritual transformation which I explore using light and expressive mark and impasto paint application to create a sense of atmosphere in my works. Oil paint, in its beauty and movement, has a unique way of capturing and exploring separation between what is still and moving as well as what is solid and what is liquid. This allows me to explore these ideas in a more literal way as well. In this literal sense, I am highly influenced by horror movies such as those by Chronenburg, David Lynch, and Ari Aster as well as existentialist writers like Kafka, Jean Paul Sartre, and Camus. Additionally, I find myself interested in the visuals of photography and theater. In these works, I attempt to explore the magic that lies within these intimate moments of change.
BIO
Cole Bespalko is an oil painter based out of Brooklyn, New York and born in Chicago, Illinois. He is currently working on his undergraduate degree in painting at Pratt Institute and hopes to pursue an MFA.