We are pleased to announce our third one-person exhibition by Washington artist, Drie Chapek. In Inside The Outside the artist continues her deeply personal approach to oil painting. Incorporating images of both abstracted natural phenomena and human-made spaces and objects, she creates visual space to explore her inner world through imagery from the exterior world.

In her lusciously painted work, thick impasto brush strokes along with thin washes of color are deployed to explore the universality of Chapek’s own personal experience. In her search for this common thread of humanity, the artist finds that though “our differences are vast, our connections and similarities are as well.” 

“In my work, I am creating visual space to explore my inner world through imagery from the exterior world. I construct my painted environments with personal reminders of complexity, pain, pleasure and delight discovered within these worlds.

Through the use of breath work and somatic experiencing I am able to hold the variables of life so that I can stay in my body as an active participant of my human experience. Composing collisions of energies gives me a visual field in which to explore and connect my life's joy and grief experiences.”

–Drie Chapek

Biography

Drie Chapek graduated in 2002 with a BA in painting from the University of Kansas, Lawrence, having studied there with Roger Shimomura. The artist lives and works in Edmonds, WA.