Watercolor Artist
HANK PULKOWSKI is an award-winning watercolor artist and teacher who lives and works in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. After his early retirement in 2005 from a 33-year career in law enforcement in the state of Pennsylvania, Hank has been devoting most of his time to photography and watercolor painting. Most of Hank’s paintings are derived from his photographs from personal adventures around the world as well as the United States.
“I would characterize my current painting style as mostly representational, existing somewhere between the abstract and the realistic; not purely impressionistic but not at all photo-realistic. More specifically, the up-close detail of a representational painting may appear impressionistic, or even abstract, but when viewed from an appropriate distance, the painting takes on a sense of reality; that is, we can recognize the subject of the painting as an object that we understand and know.
Above all, I suppose, representational art is about the suggestion of detail, not the recording of detail. Being both a photographer and a painter, I am always conscious of the fact that the camera records, while the artist suggests. As Vincent Van Gogh said: ‘A work of art is a personal encounter with reality, not a copy.'”
Mostly self-taught as a watercolorist, Hank’s paintings have been juried into and appeared in numerous shows and exhibitions both in Pennsylvania and South Carolina. Hank is a Signature Member of the Pennsylvania Watercolor Society. His work was featured in PROFESSIONAL ARTIST magazine in their October 2014 issue, and INTERNATIONAL ARTIST magazine ran a six-page article on Hank’s work in their February-March 2016 issue.
He exhibits and sells his artwork in Myrtle Beach at the Waccamaw Boulevard Gallery in Myrtle Beach, at the Sunset River Marketplace in Calabash, North Carolina, and at the Charleston Artist Guild Gallery in Charleston, South Carolina.He has also taught classes in watercolor painting at Coastal Carolina University, (OLLI).