A semi abstract painter focusing on expressive figure, with semi abstract background, creating unusual compositions constructed by geometric lines.
I was born in the 1970’s, in the industrial North of France from a Polish immigrant mother. The house of my parents was stuck between a railroad and the architectural structure of the coal mine where my father worked. My paintings still remain this mink very geometrical by the urban space. I am self-taught and coming from an uneducated environment; therefore, I have judged my work for a long time as an intimate madness and was reluctant to show it.
I started to show my work in 2000, and received at that moment the Eddy Rugale Michailov Prize of the Fondation Taylor (Paris). Right away, I expressed myself on large canvases, with an expressive style, and a dark palette inherited from my Eastern Europe background. The themes that I explored then were a sensible and evanescent universe where bodies, often feminine, touch and explore one another in spaces that echo with their emotions in a poetic and abstract world. My journeys in China until 2006 anchored this universe even more.
I discovered light when I moved to Provence, at the end of the 2000’s. Suddenly, colors came as focal point in my research, as well as contemporary themes, such as immigration, with the series “Sleeping beauties (immigrant women)”, or as prostitution with the series “View from the Bridge of Sighs”. I want the spectator to feel with their sensations at first then to bring them to a deeper reflection of contemporary events.
In 2006, I met the sculptor Jean-Philippe Richard, and we had a 10-year collaboration, mostly three-dimensional pieces. Since 2016, I created with the painter Noëllie Brun a long-run collaboration relating to empowerment in creative women, titled “Nanas in situ”. The goal of this collaboration is to create painted portraits as well as interviews and show the final works in institutional spaces.
I love the materiality of paint, I believe that to express myself, I have to put my hands into the dirt of it, the beautifully colored dirt of it. I believe that one can make a difference in our society. What I want to show is the deep changes that my heroes on canvas can make, because they are capable of changing the materiality of their life, of the atmosphere surrounding them and touching others.
My work evolved of two different manners.
On a formal point of view, I’ve ventured by a fearless use of the color towards less realistic scenes, often reaching to the limits of abstraction.
Regarding the themes, they are often chosen connected to current events, but I like to offer a softer, more sensual and feminine outlook, aware that too much violence can hinder a more precise gaze on the canvas. My major artistic influence is expressionism but also the vision of suspended time, the sudden incursion of the fantasy, which is a reminiscence of the Grand masters that have impacted my painting.
