Elaine Pawlowicz
Associate Professor, Studio Art: Drawing & Painting
2023 University Distinguished Teaching Professor
Department of Studio Art
940-565-4748
Elaine.Pawlowicz@unt.edu
Art Building, Room 306
Website: Elaine Pawlowicz
Elaine Pawlowicz received her B.F.A. from Southern Methodist University, Dallas, in 1990 and her M.F.A. in Painting from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1993. She continued to live and work as an artist in Chicago for the following 15 years before beginning teaching at the University of North Texas in 2006.
Her paintings are inspired by the Chicago Imagist Tradition. The style is magical realism, where the space is flat with an idiosyncratic perspective. The paintings are speckled with tiny characters swallowed up by neon color fields. These highly personalized narratives are slightly ambiguous and peculiarly lighthearted.
Her work has been exhibited in numerous national solo and group shows. She was commissioned in a highly competitive process by the City of Chicago to paint 12 large-scale paintings for permanent installation at Oriole Park Library, Chicago.
She was formerly the Midwest Regional Representative in Admissions for the School of the Art Institute of Chicago from 1996–2001. Also, she worked as an artist consultant for two fine art paint companies specializing in teaching materials and techniques in painting. She has been awarded many professional artist residences, including Ucross Foundation, Clearmont, Wyo.; Montana Artist’s Refuge at Thunderhead, Raynesfored, Mont.; Pouch Cove Foundation, Pouch Cove, Newfoundland; Gullkistan, Iceland; New Pacific Studio, Masterton, New Zealand; Obras Foundation, Portugal; and AIR Paducah, Kentucky. Elaine has taught college-level art in painting, drawing and design for more than 15 years at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, the University of Dayton, Dayton, Ohio, and currently, at the University of North Texas.
Pawlowicz was president of the 2019–2021 Texas Association of Schools of Art.
2020-2021 Institute for the Advancement of the Arts Faculty Fellow
Sept. 11, 2020 — Elaine Pawlowicz has been selected to pursue creative projects as a 2020-2021 Institute for the Advancement of the Arts Faculty Fellow. Pawlowicz will create a body of new paintings following research trips to Joshua Tree National Park, California, and Los Angeles and participating in a six-week artist residency in South Africa and Kenya. She plans to visit Port Elizabeth, South Africa, the birthplace of Nelson Mandela, to learn more about this crucial center for anti-apartheid. Pawlowicz will paint directly from natural phenomena on land and sea and reinterpret observations into her narrative paintings from imagination. She aims to depict how emotional politics can be harnessed to create social change. She will also develop an installation of sci-fi paintings sharing the resiliency of how the global human spirit endures natural and psychological disasters but still finds the will to move forward. She hopes to exhibit her work in impactful national and international venues.
Pawlowicz is known for paintings inspired by the Chicago Imagist tradition, a type of magical realism where the space is flat with an idiosyncratic perspective. Her work has been exhibited in many national solo and group shows. She also was commissioned in a highly competitive process by the city of Chicago to paint 12 large-scale paintings for permanent installation at the city’s Oriole Park Library.
UNT is committed to fostering creativity and launched the IAA in 2009 to support and advance excellence in the visual, performing, creative and literary arts. Each year, the university selects professors to be part of the Faculty Fellows program, which enables UNT faculty to focus on creative endeavors for a semester and then bring their enhanced perspectives to teaching.
More about Elaine Pawlowicz
2019-2021 Position: President of the Texas Association of Schools of Art
2022 Position: Board Member of the Texas Association of Schools of Art
2020-2021 Fellowship: Institute for the Advancement of the Arts Faculty Fellow
2022 Residency: Joshua Tree National Park, Calif.; sponsored by National Park Foundation
2022 Position: Program Coordinator and Artist in Residence for Project Onward, Sheboygan, Wisc.
2022 Presentation: Artist Lecture, Oriole Park Library and City of Chicago Public Art Commission, Chicago, Ill., July 23, 2022.