Crystal Jean Baranyk, Self Portrait of AuDHD, 2024, oil, 45.7 × 61.0 cm (18 × 24in)
Crystal Jean Baranyk, The Infinite Sea (Voyage), 2013, 76.2 × 76.2 cm(30 × 30in)
Crystal Jean Baranyk
Her art reflects a lifelong negotiation between words and images. Dyslexic and autistic, she learned to read and write later than most, yet developed an intuitive ability to communicate visually. For Baranyk, images have always functioned as a second language — one that moves beyond the constraints of text. This visual lexicon enables her to connect on a psychological and symbolic level, extending the language of semiotics into visual storytelling.
Her recent work emphasizes ecology and reuse, continuing her engagement with the intersections of art, environment, and human perception. Baranyk’s practice embodies an enduring quest: to understand how art communicates, and to transform that communication into shared awareness.
A: From the moment we enter this world, we develop preferences and feelings shaped by experiences for which we have no words or verbal language. Our subconscious learns which colors, shapes, and textures delight or repel us, and we carry these impressions throughout our lives. Academics refer to this language of signs and symbols as semiotics. The rest of us know it as intuition, an invisible framework that shapes how we move through the world.
Q: How does your practice, or this particular work, engage with or respond to these codes?
A: Art, for me, is about communication and connection. When I choose materials, I want them to resonate with what I am trying to convey. If I am making artwork about trees, I might work on a wood panel, letting its natural grain become part of the flow of the piece. If I am exploring the trophic chain, the balance of life on this planet, I want the work to reflect the interdependence of organisms, perhaps through the use of recycled scraps in a mixed medium. And if I create political cartoons about regressionist policies, I may model them after Medieval marginalia, both to parody the backwardness of the characters and to highlight the triviality of it all.
Q: How do you navigate the balance between individuality and collective life — finding and standing by your own voice while also being connected to and supported by others?
A: Navigating the balance between individual life and still being connected to and supported by others has always always been a challenge for me. As an autistic, I burn out easily and have to be protective of my downtime. I have found that I enjoy doing certain things alone, such as traveling, but being part of a community that has a good discourse about art and ideas is catnip to me.
Q: What has your path as an artist revealed to you about resilience, belonging, or empowerment in your own life?
A: I believe the very root of belonging starts with the ability to communicate effectively, and my preferred method of communication is with visual art. There is nothing more empowering than having the ability to connect meaningfully with others.
Q: Can you share what guided your choice of the work included in Unspoken Codes, and what you hope it might evoke for viewers?
A: I chose the work The Infinite Sea, because it illustrates how I felt about the unknown and my journeys at a certain point in my life. I was also thinking about how others who faced even more uncertainties still chose exploration. This is represented by the tiny outrigger canoe in the upper right of the work. The waves and the currents and the water feel and look like opaque watery arms and there is no end to them.
The other work is a self-portrait: an octopus depicted as an anatomical human heart, alongside a cross-section of a human brain with a California poppy growing out of its brain stem. In the simplest umwelt terms, this piece expresses what it feels like to be neurodivergent. My umwelt is not that of the majority, perhaps seventy percent of the population. Yet I have learned to empathize with and interact with people of all kinds. We share the same organs but use them a little differently, and most of the time that difference isn’t noticeable, but sometimes I still feel the strangeness and disconnect. You may not know it, but I’ve come a very long way.