Walt Whitman in 1881 expressed, “As to me, I know of nothing else but miracles.” Whitman goes on to list some very ordinary phenomena as miracles, from “stars shining quiet and bright,” to standing under trees in a wood to observing birds in flight. The vein of American mysticism that links the natural world with the spiritual has found form in artists as disparate as Rockwell Kent, Agnes Pelton, and KK Kozik: all artists who process what they see, what they experience, and what they imagine into a painted image.

 A Sharon resident, Kozik’s minor miracles mostly surface from the rhythms of her day. Prosaic encounters of beauty during hikes, strolls, and swims simmer on the back burner of her mind until stirred up and warmed they knock on her door, demanding to be painted. Ideas and images never come out quite the way they went into the pot. Kozik is not a realist, slavishly painting a tree, branch by branch, but rather embodies a transcendental hunter-gatherer, a sly burglar of ideas and colors. An island of trees in a lake is what was seen, but Miracle Island is what she painted. The artist releases beauty from the prosaic; her work converges at the center of the everyday world, weaving together the processes of imagination in memory and the execution by her hand.

Show runs from March 30 – May 12, 2024 at Kenise Barnes Fine Art. 7 Fulling Lane, Kent, KBFA.com