Department of Art

Volha (Lola) Panco (b. Minsk, Belarus) studied Academic Drawing and Painting at the Belarusian State Academy of Arts before moving to the United States in 2012. She received her MFA from Arizona State University, Phoenix, Arizona in 2024. Panco currently serves as an Assistant Professor of Painting and Drawing at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina.

Panco’s work explores how social and political upheavals impact our relationship with the environment, turning it from leisure and resource to one of shelter and survival. Through elements of cityscapes, vegetation, and light, it highlights the emergence, endurance, and demise of beings, reflecting on the delicate balance of ecosystems, the consequences of power structures, and the natural cycles of life and death. Panco mobilizes the formal tension of painting as outwardly static but inwardly charged, pushing beyond the limitations of coherent logic and conveying the deep complexity of life’s impalpable connections and hidden phenomena.

Panco’s work has won numerous awards, including the Dedalus MFA Fellowship, Martin Wong Foundation Scholarship, and Gayle J Novak and Robert D. Cocke Award in Painting. It has been featured in the Washington Post, Fine Art Connoisseur, and Metropolitan Magazine. Her drawings and paintings have been privately collected throughout the US and are held in the permanent collection of Salisbury University and the Galbut Foundation.