Embedded Files
"Contemporary theologians acknowledge the astonishing renaissance of religious involvement in contemporary art, and Richard Wlodarczak is at the vanguard of this renaissance."
James Finlay - James Finlay Fine Art Appraisals
Curriculum Vitae
Education
1996 - Master of Fine Arts Degree. The School of the Art Institute of Chicago
1994 - Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree with Honours, University of Manitoba
Solo Exhibitions
2024 - The Inherent Icon, Solo Exhibition, Art Works Gallery, Vancouver, BC
2016 - 1 One 1, Solo Exhibition, Waterfall Building, Vancouver, BC
2015 - A Hazard Crick World, Solo Exhibition, Charles Clark Gallery, Vancouver, BC
2011 - After Myth, Solo Exhibition, Havana Gallery, Vancouver, BC
2009 - Roma Invicta, Solo Exhibition, Havana Gallery, Vancouver, BC
2008 - Resurfacing, Solo Exhibition, Mihrab Gallery, Vancouver, BC
2007 - Surfacing, Solo Exhibition, Mihrab Gallery, Vancouver, BC
2005 - Faith and Reason, Solo Exhibition, Art Works Gallery, Vancouver, BC
1998 - After Chicago, West End Cultural Center, Solo Exhibition, Winnipeg, MB
Group Exhibitions
2025 - Abstracted, Federation Gallery, Vancouver. BC
2025 - IUBILAEUM 2025 , Palazzo Della Cancelleria, Rome, Italy
2001 - 2025 - Art Works Gallery, Group Exhibitions, Vancouver, BC
2011 - Trio - 3 Person Exhibition, Art Works Gallery, Vancouver, BC
2008 - U8, SOPA Fine Art Gallery, Group Exhibition, Kelowna, BC
2004 - 2007 - Art for Life, Benefit Fine Art Auction, Vancouver, BC
2006 - Regeneration, Art House Gallery, Benefit Group Exhibition, Vancouver, BC
2005 - Moja Moja, Art House Gallery, Benefit Group Exhibition, Vancouver, BC
2003 - Palm Springs Art Expo, Group Exhibition, Palm Springs, CA
2001 - Hyperspace Studio, Group Exhibition, Vancouver, BC
2000 - Size Matters - Glass Onion Gallery, Group Exhibition, Vancouver, BC
1999 - St. Norbert Arts and Cultural Center, Group Exhibition, Winnipeg, MB
1998 - Raven Gallery, Group Exhibition, Whistler, BC
1998 - Rogues Gallery, Group Exhibition, Winnipeg, MB
1996 - White Tower Building, MFA Thesis Exhibition, Chicago, IL
1996 - Gallery 2, Juried Group Exhibition, Chicago, IL
1995 - Betty Rymer Gallery, Juried Group Exhibition, Chicago, IL
1994 - Art Space Gallery, BFA Thesis Exhibition, Winnipeg, MB
1994 - National Bank Building, Group Exhibition, Winnipeg, MB
1994 - Plug-In Gallery, Group Exhibition, Winnipeg, MB
1993 - Cowboys & Martyrs - St. Norbert Arts and Cultural Center, Two Person Exhibition, Winnipeg, MB
Awards
1995 - Recipient of International Scholarship, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago
1994 - Gold Medal for Highest Standing in Fine arts, University of Manitoba
1994 - Heinz-Jordan Prize in Painting
Abstracted - Federation Gallery - 2025
Abstracted, a group show exhibition at Federation Gallery, Granville Island, Vancouver, 2025. One painting exhibited; two additional works received honorable mention and were featured on the gallery's online platform.
The Magister - 60"x 48 - oil on canvas - 2024
Installation View - Federation Gallery - 2024
Installation View - Federation Gallery - 2024
Iubilaeum 2025 - Rome
The Blessing was included in Iubilaeum 2025, a group exhibition held at Palazzo della Cancelleria in Rome, from July 17 - 21, 2025. Limited edition prints are available at Art Works Gallery.
Installation view
The Blessing - 20"x 16" - oil on canvas - 2025
Exhibition catalogue
Pallazo Della Cancelleria, Rome
Context
Critical Essays
The Reclamation of Richard Wlodarczak.
Richard Wlodarczak is a man on a mission.
A Vancouver based visual artist, with a track record of completed sales of his paintings going back to the early 2000’s, his focus now, at age 52 is to re-establish and to re-claim his career, which had fallen victim to the auguries of artistic success.
The Romantic ideal of the successful but misunderstood genius tortured by his demons, and the artist’s efforts to manage them, was unfortunately demonstrative of his 20 year debilitating ‘season in hell’, characterized by alcoholism, anxiety and depression. He has witnessed fellow artists and friends fall victim to the same fate, some with ruinous results.
He is now in a state of heroic yet humble recovery, channeling his energies on reconstructing self through the catharsis of the creative act.
Painting has been his saviour; it has been a bulwark against the trials and tribulations characteristic of a dis-enchanted world plagued by loss and trauma. This narrative of loss is endemic in the religious versions of disenchantment such as that told by Charles Taylor.
The act of painting offers its practitioners the opportunity to re-imagine oneself and ones place in a re-enchanted world awash in a river of magic, mystery and miracles where everything is not explicable, knowable and predictable.
Wlodarczak’s current show at ArtWorks Gallery in Vancouver is unapologetically demonstrative of that existential vision.
Mostly figuratively based, the images seek to metaphorically recover that which was lost or hidden, to expose the mystery of what it means to be sentient beings in the world. They offer a space to encourage contemplative interpretation of that, which makes us human with all our foibles, failures and inadequacies.
James Finlay - James Finlay Fine Art Appraisals. August 8, 2024
Roma Invicta - 60"x 84" - mixed media on canvas - 2010-2014
Roma Invicta - 60"x 84" - mixed media on canvas - 2010-2014
Practical Art History or Confessions of a Fine Art Appraiser by Jim Finlay.
Finlay Fine Art Wealth Management.
Chapter 21. The Case of our Man in Havana.
"Tantaene animis caelestibus irae? (Are there such violent passions in celestial minds?)
Last fall I was invited to an opening at The Havana Restaurant of new works by a local painter named Richard Wlodarczak. The Havana, thankfully is continuing it’s tradition of offering an exhibition space to established, as well as emerging artists and that commitment to the visual arts has enhanced the cultural sophistication, vulnerability and diversity of fine art in the city.
Roma Invicta 1 Richard Wlodarczak
The title of his show Roma Invicta (unconquerable Rome) alludes to the inevitability of militaristic and imperialistic expansion of empire necessary to create order and stability. Pax Romana. (Roman peace)
Richard Wlodarczak is a history painter; he paints the indeterminate and unstable residue of disaster. His work is visceral and unapologetic. He uses traditional as well as non-traditional materials such as tar and stalks of rye, in concert to reference the present in terms of the past. The incongruity of media is made more immediate by his use of a non-representational image making technique, which is devoted to accident and unpredictability.
He intentionally destabilizes hierarchies of visual language to abandon them in a condition of undecidability and paints the remembrance of the ruin of destruction and catastrophe demanded by the totality of military conflict. The ambiguities of truth, lies and ideologies struggle to coalesce in a context of undecidability as the viewer is forced to survive in a world without redemption or the heroic.( Much the same way as a prisoner in G. B. Pirenasi’s Carceri series.)
The impact of catastrophe is overwhelming and absolute such that nothing appears to have been touched as his images constitute a specifically traumatized understanding of the world which cannot be accessed by those who did not experience the apocalypse. The viewer is subsumed by the inevitability of disaster, which ruins everything all the while leaving everything intact. We are drawn to view and review his images as necessary for processing the experience of trauma associated with the initial disaster. Even as the act of reproduction dissipates the specificity upon which memory is based, by reproducing things we ensure that they will not be forgotten. Thus the experience of the disaster is only truly experienced by its reproduction.
He paints the latency of the experience of shock (without the awe) to force the viewer to process the intensity of an otherwise unendurable experience. He demands that we do not forget and insists that memory survive, to remind us of what has gone before.
Wlodarczak’s images announce the paradox of the archive as we will only know what is meant by the archive in times to come as the past can only be recovered if it is experienced in terms of loss and ruin. The archive reminds us that violence will persist as there can be no conflict without the archive. When I think of Havana, (Our man in Havana.1959) I also think of other such exotic far away places as Rio de Janerio (Flying Down to Rio.1933) and Brazil (Brazil.1985) as states of mind."
Press
Galleries West Magazine
Richard Wlodarczak - Faith and Reason, Sept. 19 - oct. 22, 2025.
August 31, 2005
"According to Carl Jung, “One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious,” and by Jung’s standard, Richard Wlodarczak is well on his way to becoming enlightened. His teachers at the University of Manitoba in 1994 and the Art Institute of Chicago in 1996 commented on his dark themes, a quality about which Wlodarczak is all too aware.
“There is a somber darkness to my work,” he says, attributing it partly to the influence of seeing passion imagery and Bible mythology at Catechism classes while growing up in Winnipeg. “But I’m trying to find a little bit of light in the darkness in my recent work.
His Faith and Reason show captures this battle. It isn’t about the difference between religion and science, but rather, as Wlodarczak writes in his artistic statement, “...the internal battle: body and mind, flesh and spirit, male and female, light and dark.”
Wlodarczak works primarily in oil on canvas. In the past few years, he has incorporated materials such as tar and rye for texture. “It derives from my mother’s garden. It has a great sense of mystery and earthiness to it. There is something enigmatic about it,” Wlodarczak says, admitting that he is not completely clear about the motives and meanings behind his paintings.
Instead, he remains faithful to his pursuit of the art process, which he describes as modern in sensibility while retaining the mystery of the primeval.
Deprofundis - 55"x 77" - oil, tar, and rye on canvas - 2005
Deprofundis - 55"x 77" - oil, tar, and rye on canvas - 2005
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