Cecily Byk

Cecily Byk is a New Jersey-based watercolorist, illustrator and art instructor, who was was selected for a Johnson & Johnson One Person Show Award in 2010.
Born in Dallas, Texas, she moved at age 11 with her family to Kailua on the island of Oahu. She grew up there and at other areas in Hawaii, where she attended Hawaii Loa College in Honolulu. Returning to the United States, Byk lived in New Jersey, eventually moving to Brooklyn to attend Pratt Institute, where she majored in illustration and received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree.
In the mid-1990s, Byk embarked on a career as a professional illustrator and portrait artist, working in oils, watercolor, pencil and charcoal with a focus on fantasy, floral and figure painting.
In 2003, she began teaching drawing and watercolor painting to beginning and experienced artists in classroom and private settings, including her "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain" classes.
An associate member of the American Watercolor Society, she is also a member of the New Jersey Watercolor Society and the Northeast Watercolor Society.
Critic Jeannine Kinsey made a free associative comparison of Byk's Water Lillies watercolor painting to literature:
:I love watercolors and the fluidity that they give to a painting. I also love a book that is a bit whimsical... a book that has an attribute which cannot be really captured with words but is still there. Secondly, despite being slightly whimsical, the painting is also bold. It is bright, and colorful. I appreciate and enjoy a book that tells me what they it is about, all the while hiding something special until the very end. The painting's bright colors against the black background (pond, actually) convey much the same feeling as the aforementioned book. Finally, variety. I love the appearance of the dragonfly, and the fish—something submerged, something loose in the air, giving the appearance of depth—another important attribute of the books I read. An almost paradoxical attribute, in that, to have depth, one must have their head in the heavens... Thanks to Cecily Byk who has some absolutely lovely paintings which anyone with a beating heart should check out.

Awards
A 2009 award-winner in the Garden State Watercolor Society's 40th Annual Juried Exhibition, Byk was selected for a Johnson & Johnson One Person Show Award in 2010.
In 2010, her watercolor Lost Girl (2008) received the Dagmar H. Tribble Award in the Garden State Watercolor Society's 41st Annual Juried Exhibition. Dagmar Tribble was the founder of the Garden State Watercolor Society and its president from 1970 to 1989. The exhibit was held from September 11 to November 7, 2010 by the Trenton City Museum at Ellarslie Mansion, Cadwalader Park in Trenton, New Jersey.

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