Scott Wolniak is a multidisciplinary artist and occasional curator. His diverse practice has involved drawing, sculpture, video and animation, and his teaching reflects this range. The primary focus of Wolniak’s work since 2018 has been the creation of experimental pattern-based paintings that can be seen as outward projections of interior spaces, manifesting the ways in which abstraction can convey a sense of rhythm, transformation, groundlessness, and internal movement. Based on motifs of the natural world, as well as tropes of consciousness, the paintings are intended to function as immersive energy fields that invite slow looking.
Wolniak has exhibited extensively throughout the US. His work has been written about in publications including ArtForum, Art in America and the Chicago Tribune, and is part of numerous permanent collections, including the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Lynden Sculpture Garden, Milwaukee. Wolniak received a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1995 and MFA from the University of Illinois at Chicago in 2002.
Since the mid-90's, Wolniak has been active in the Chicago art scene, consistently exhibiting as well as organizing and curating shows. He ran the influential alternative project space, Suitable, in his Humboldt Park garage between 1999 and 2004, and has recently curated shows at the Hyde Park Art Center and the Logan Center for the Arts. Wolniak received the Illinois Arts Council’s Creative Accelerator Award in 2025, and the Janel M. Mueller Award for Excellence in Pedagogy from the University of Chicago in 2014.
