Junior Nicole Strounine started to draw in 5th grade by just doodling.
Strounine said she kept drawing after she realized she had talent. She enjoys making art because she gets to use her imagination as raw material.
“An idea will come to you, and you can just pick up materials and create your art,” Strounine said. “That works with any medium of art like photography and other types. You don’t have to meticulously plan it out beforehand. You just jump into it and start.”
This year, Strounine is working on an independent study for painting and drawing with arts teacher Donna Sartanowicz. Sartanowicz said Strounine has a unique style of art and a strong graphic sensibility.
“She sort of has a way of pulling out the design, finding some regularity in things, adding pattern, really making it very graphic and bold and almost more like a graphic designer than a fine artist, and it’s really interesting,” said Sartanowicz.
According to Sartanowicz, Strounine is a mature and focused student who is interested in her work.
“She’s willing to give that gift of time to herself to pursue her own curiosity,” said Sartanowicz. “Sometimes, I think students approach learning as if it’s some kind of a task that they have to do, that the teacher’s going to give them this stuff and that’s what they have to learn. Whereas with Nicole, I think there are things that she wants to learn. She’s curious about it. She’s willing to be an active pursuer of those things; she’s not waiting for me to tell her what she should know.”
Her friend, junior Celia Cummiskey, said Strounine is an ambitious artist who uses her imagination to experiment.
“I think her use of color is really great, and she’s always trying new things and evolving as an artist, which I think is admirable,” Cummiskey said. “Nicole has a really strong sense of who she wants to be as an artist, and I think that really makes her art something special.”
Strounine constantly looks to improve her art by comparing herself to her friends. She said she sees what they are good at and tries to improve in that area as well.
“Being friends with other artists helps me motivate myself to become a better artist,” she said. “Like seeing what they are good at and seeing if I can improve in that as well.”
Strounine thinks she has not only matured as an artist but as a person.
“I’ve learned to use other people’s art as motivation rather than discouragement,” she said. “I used to think, ‘Oh I’ll never be that good, why even try?’ and instead I now think, ‘No, I can be that good if I really want to, I just have to work at it.’ I’ve learned that as long as you’re passionate about something, you can get to wherever you are going. If you put in the time and the effort, you can become something great.”
Sartanowicz said Strounine has truly found her place in art.
