Cindy Wysocki is a mixed media painter based in Waukesha, WI, whose joyful, expressive work gives people permission to feel. Her paintings are alive with color and movement, present and inviting, drawing you in for a closer look and meeting you exactly where you are.
She believes creativity is not an innate gift to be denied to those who don't have it. It is something you have always possessed but might need to find.
She paints with the energy of the little girl she once was, the one who walked away from art early and came back when life forced her to be still. That return changed everything.
Informed by decades as a Myofascial Release Therapist, Cindy knows intimately the layers we carry and what it feels like when something long held begins to release. She moves color the way she works with the body, with presence, with patience, feeling what wants to unfold.
She paints for connection, creating a space where viewers can pause, reclaim the parts of themselves they have set aside, and return to joy.
Statement
I was a little girl who loved to make art, but I didn't believe in myself. I looked at everyone else's work and thought mine paled in comparison. I was not good enough. What I created felt imperfect, unworthy. So I walked away before I had even left elementary school.
I envied people who could create. I was convinced I simply didn't have it in me. Art was an innate blessing, something you were either born with or not. I held that belief for a very long time.
Then life became chaotic, and I had no choice but to get still. In that stillness, something surfaced, a desire I had been carrying since childhood. The desire to create. To learn. To finally find out what I was capable of.
So I said yes to that desire. And I discovered I had it in me all along.
For many years, I worked as a Myofascial Release Therapist. That work taught me that we carry everything in our body, our fears, our doubts, and the beliefs we hold about who we are and what we deserve. Those beliefs can become the greatest resistance of all. But when we allow ourselves to truly feel and acknowledge what we hold, everything can begin to shift and heal.
Painting is a similar therapy, in a different language. I move color the way I worked with the body, with presence, with deep respect for what might be ready to surface. It gives my held emotions somewhere to go. Every painting is a reminder to that little girl and to me that she could do it.
I paint for the joy of it, and to set down what I no longer need to hold. I paint for connection, not to show you how I feel, but to create a moment where you can pause and reclaim the parts of yourself you have set aside.
So if something stirs when you stand in front of my work, don't be surprised. It was created by my joyful younger self to resolve whatever I've been carrying.