Paulina Pawlik – Barborka (she/her)
My current creative activity is mainly devoted to studying various ways of representing the spiritual dimension of the human figure, internal states, and sacred spaces.
I drew inspiration from experiences of alienation, isolation, migration, and crossing borders to find my roots, home, belonging, to understand my heritage and the sources of my beliefs—the concepts of sublime, mysticism and spirituality, the sacred and the profane.
I experiment with composition using found images, photos, and new digital tools to picture people. By combining silhouettes, mirror images, fortuitous print marks and liquid lines, I join figuration and abstraction in my artworks. I am working primarily in oil painting and screenprinting.
Aura
60 x 60
Oil on canvas
2021
The inspiration is a photograph showing the reflection of a man on the water. The movement of the waves above the head resembles halos (aureole). It seemed to me to be an image of a soul or a sacred, elusive thing. Apart from the subject, the very form of the figure reflecting in the water seemed quite interesting to me that I decided to paint it. That was an opportunity for me to use oil paint as water paint. I was pouring paint mixed with the oil medium and turpentine directly from the jar, swinging the canvas in different directions.
Awakening
60 x 80 cm
Oil on canvas
2020
‘Painting is a form of time travel, of conjuring up the past. Places, spaces, people, and imagining new possibilities. It is magic.’
Andrew Cranston
This composition is inspired by photos of the shadow of a female figure on the wall, digitized sketching and collages. I painted this wet on wet using large brushes and printmaking tools.
Dance with me
60 x 60 cm
Oil on canvas
2020
Within my work, I rethink the importance of spirituality for human life through the aesthetic representation of the human body. I try to recreate my object or figure realistically until it feels quite finished to subject it to a blurring process, then I re-explore the surface while contemplating the topic. I acted intuitively, depending on the topic I want to portray (for myself) and responding to the moment when it happens.
Humble
120 x80 cm
Oil on canvas
2021
In the cult of recalling absent or dead loves ones, the cultic value of the image finds its last refuge. In the transient expression of a human countenance in early photographs, we catch one final glimpse of aura. It is that gives them their melancholic, matchless beauty.
Walter Benjamin ‘ The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.’
I love seeing old photos. Especially those from the times when taking the photo was an unusual event, even a solemn one. Each time I see something different in them. I often watch the heroes of the second plan and their gaze. They seem to focus more on the portraitist than on their pose or seem to be absent. By distinguishing them from the whole composition and placing these figures in the centre of my painting, I give them a different meaning. I am trying to capture the aura of this character and what is real, authentic and eternal.
Lunula
140 x 140 cm
oil on canvas
2021
Lunula is a woman’s crescent-shaped necklace that symbolizes fertility, this form of jewellery or amulet was known already in the late Neolithic, Chalcolithic and early Bronze Age. This shape was the leitmotif for me, thanks to which I began to create new works.
At first glance, it may surprise that the symbol of femininity was for people the crescent moon, not the full moon – complete and perfect. However, when you think more deeply about the analogy of the lunar and women’s cycles, you can see more – it is in the middle of the cycle that a woman reaches her fertility peak.
This work is autobiographical in nature and intimate.
Meditating Man
60 x 80 cm
Oil on canvas
2020
Many of my work pursues the idea that people should face their interior selves rather than the external world. The pictured man with his eyes closed expresses an attitude of looking “inside”. It is not possible without contact with the body, the presentation of which is the subject of this work.
Myrtle
60 x 60 cm
oil on canvas
2021
Another work in which I try to understand the role of the body in spirituality. I used two colours, red and blue, representing the blood and water that permeate us and connect us with our ancestors. The message of this work was the idea that we are our ancestors.
Prayer
20 x 20 cm
Oil on canvas
2021
Over this year, I explore religiosity in art to represent the body, feelings (suffering) and the sublime.
I was studying how the religious threads placed in works of art created in the 21st century?
Are religious inspirations impact the aesthetic representation of the body?
Are the artists can use religious motives in their creative practice without going into theology?
Roots
120 x 80 cm
Oil on canvas
2021
For there is hope for a tree: If it is cut down, it will sprout again, and its tender shoots will not fail.
Bible, Job 14:7
