Underlying Beauty, a solo exhibition of paintings by Brett K. Novack, a Garden City native, contemporary Kansas artist, art educator, coach, and GCCC alumnus, is currently featured at the Mercer Gallery at Garden City Community College through Dec. 4.
Gallery hours are 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday–Thursday, and 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Fridays.
Through a body of nonrepresentational work, Novack explores the intersection of visual abstraction, personal experience, and the complexities of learning with a disability. Drawing upon his experiences as both a student and an educator, he transforms the challenges of learning hardships into a visual language of color, texture, pattern, spatial relationships, and material experimentation.
“Learning new topics is a difficult task, but even more so for a person with any type of learning disability. Learning disabilities cause difficulties in school and in life, but also how that person feels about themselves,” Novack said. “This person could feel lost, incomplete, not good enough, not smart enough, and the list never ends. I understand this since I am a person that has dealt with the struggles of learning disabilities.”
An artist reception is scheduled from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. on Friday, November 13 inside the Mercer Gallery in the Pauline Joyce Fine Arts Building. The public is invited to meet Novack and view the exhibition. Garden City Community College will be closed for Thanksgiving Break November 21-29.
In Underlying Beauty, painting becomes a means of making visible experiences that are often difficult to articulate. Novack employs figure-ground reversal, shifting positive and negative space, varied mark-making, and differences in paint viscosity to explore feelings of uncertainty, imbalance, disorientation, and discovery.
Layered surfaces and competing visual elements evoke the complexity of processing information, while moments of increased clarity suggest the confidence that can emerge through understanding, perseverance, and the development of effective learning strategies.
Rather than illustrating disability through recognizable imagery, Novack uses abstraction to invite viewers into an experience that is personal in origin yet broadly human in its implications.
“The body of work I began started by working with positive and negative space, or the figure-ground reversal, techniques that require control and others with less control, and differences in paint viscosity to focus on drawing attention to learning disabilities. These areas all reference how a person with a disability can feel, such as lost, not in control, empty, or imbalanced,” he said.
Born and raised in Garden City, Novack’s artistic journey reflects determination, resourcefulness, and a sustained commitment to education. He received a scholarship to pursue art at Garden City Community College, graduating with high honors in 2017 and earning recognition by being awarded the Most Outstanding Graduate 2017.
Novack continued his studies at Fort Hays State University, where he earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 2019, subsequently completed the Transition to Teaching program, and began pursuing his master’s degree. His professional experience includes teaching middle school in Garden City and Holcomb, where he currently teaches and coaches students in grades six through eight at Holcomb Middle School.
These experiences inform an artistic practice grounded in the relationship between creative expression, educational access, and the varied ways people experience and understand the world.
Novack’s influences include his father, who taught him the basics of color and paint application in the family commercial painting business. His high school art teacher, Archie Oliver, recognized his potential and pushed him to strive for excellence. He is inspired by his older brother, Nathan Novack, a middle school art instructor. Novack enjoys creating artwork that shows his love for his wife, makes people laugh, his childlike wonder, and artwork that expresses his biographical connection to learning with dyslexia.
The exhibition offers visitors an opportunity to encounter Novack’s work as both a compelling investigation of contemporary painting and a thoughtful reflection on the lived experience of learning differences. His paintings resist easy interpretation, encouraging viewers to slow down, reconsider their assumptions, and discover meaning through close observation.
At the heart of Underlying Beauty is the proposition that experiences often perceived as obstacles or deficiencies may also contain unexpected forms of insight, resilience, and creative possibility.
The Mercer Gallery is especially pleased to welcome Novack back to the GCCC campus, where his development as an artist began to take shape. His return underscores the important role community colleges play in supporting emerging artists and demonstrates how artistic inquiry can continue to evolve through education, professional practice, and personal experience.
Students, faculty, and community members are invited to engage with the exhibition and learn from an artist whose work connects contemporary studio practice with the meaningful, ongoing work of teaching and learning.
For additional information, contact Mercer Gallery Director Michael Knutson at michael.knutson@gcccks.edu.
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