I think of my paintings as journals of daily thoughts, emotions and experiences. My process of painting develops through layering different images, textures and colours to achieve complex space that shimmers with atmosphere. The multi-layered surface transforms into surreal fields that my viewers can walk into. The sense that the fields are familiar is essential.

My conceptual and technical approach is inspired by process of memory. How we really think: we jump and skip from thought to thought. The present, past and future collide repeatedly. There are no boundaries. My first visual inspiration came from the walls of old buildings. The over painted, chipped off, weathered down surfaces appeal to me. The sense of history of the city and the people who live and lived there are all on these walls. I layer, scratch back and over paint my paintings believing that the whole beauty and richness (both visual and emotional) rely on that aspect.

GARDEN STUDIES
My Garden Studies have started very timidly and innocently. I thought of them as exercises. In year 2000 I have finished my Master Degree. At that very same time I lost my father. I was too exhausted to look for theoretically correct and conceptually meaningful subject matter. Out of no where (so I thought) I started to paint the flower fields. It never crossed my mind that they will become my largest series of paintings.

With time I realized that there are many reasons why I keep on painting them.

The flower fields gave me perpetual possibility of layering colours, textures and shapes. Endlessly and with joy I could concentrate on colour compositions, transparences, impasto, smooth, scratched techniques as well as the mood and atmosphere. Using brushes, combs, fingers, palette knives, forks, cloths, sponges and print making techniques I question: is it enough, does the painting feel finished? The obsessive process of painting and overlapping makes my work feel complete.

The need to make my paintings a bit naïve and dream like was another reason for continuing my Garden Studies. Inspired by Henri Rousseau, Jean Dubuffet, Paul Klee and Teofil Ociepka I seek child like painted qualities: intuitive, fearless, honest. My flowers are stylized, colours are very saturated, they do not recede in size or colour with depth of field and there is not much of shading or volume.

My grandmother Jadwiga Kuczma and her dream are one more reason for creating my Garden Studies. Only recently, when I visited my grandmother in Poland she reminded me of her dream.

Many years ago she had an operation during which she dreamed of walking through a flower field. She was recalling: “I was walking on a path, surrounded by the wild flowers. It was so peaceful and charming… and the sky was so clear, charged with light. I felt such a joy.” Shyly, she commented that she believes it was like an after death experience.

For many years I thought that my Garden Studies relied purely on artistic and structural principles. Yet, when she reminded me of that story I knew why I have started to paint them. I want my paintings to be mystical and spiritual, far beyond just ordinary flower fields. I try to imagine how beautiful my grandmother’s flower field was. I try to recreate that feeling of warmth, peace and happiness.

COMMON GROUND
Inspired by my trip to Newfoundland and Labrador, Common Ground series is about human placement within the vastness of a landscape. I loved Newfoundland’s and Labrador’s mood of isolated, little villages separated from each other by distance and rigidness of the land. There you can feel the true grandness of nature that is not interfered.

The definition of the word common: belonging or relating to more than one and an area of grassland usually in or near village, used mainly for recreation.

In this series I am hoping for more of a reaction and intuitive painting. I try to come back to more simplified composition of fields. The focus is on even more vigorous mark making, textures, patterns, line drawing and impasto techniques.

It is a very new series that I am still getting to know.