Besides painting, the artist volunteers her time to teach art enrichment at local elementary schools and senior centers, and is involved with Las Cruces Downtown – continuing a long tradition in her life of being involved in the arts.

An Obsession
Muchnikoff, originally from Manhattan, began her career in fashion, modeling and cosmetics. When she was 50, her husbanc decided to get this doctorate in pharmacy. While he schooled, Muchnikoff educated herself in painting by taking a few courses at a local community center.

The artist took to painting naturally, color made sense to her and she had a knack for creating balance in a picture.

“It became a passion, an obsession and an enjoyment.” Muchnikoff says. “It became a way of looking at the world.”

She started out painting furniture-from chests of drawers and bulletin boards, to chairs and toy chests. The work was tailored to a cutomer’s passions, whether it was dogs or Thomas the Train.

Now Muchnikoff has branched out “to paint outside of the box” to push her limits.

She uses photographs or things she has seen to shape her ideas and serendipitously puts them on canvas in acrylics. She adds anything from acrylic skins to scrap book paper, tissue, lace and wax paper to the paintings to give them a three-dimensional feel and look.

“I like to paint stories in things,” she says. “I like to find out about families. All of my paintings bring me joy.”

She feels— and has personally experienced — that art is also a therapeutic process.

A Daughter’s Gift
Three years ago, Muchnikoff’s mother was diagnosed with cancer. The artist says her mother, who had been a hairdresser all of her life, was devastated about not being able to do her life’s work anymore.

Muchnikoff traveled to Florida to spend time and provide whatever love and assistance she could. And, she wanted her mother to experience the joy she finds in painting.

“I literally bullied her into picking up a paintbrush,”Muchnikoff says. “I taught her to learn the feel of a stroke.”

What began on little canvasses turned into an obsession. The artist says her father called her on the telephone and told her that her mother was painting from the moment she woke up in the morning until the moment she went to sleep.

When Muchnikoff’s mother passed away she left behind more than 100 paintings. Muchnikoff and her father donated the paintings to raise funds for chemotherapy and radiation patients, and each kept a painting for themselves.