I’m a Polish woman artist living in South London. I have a deep obsession with colours, shapes and closing my personal memories/experiences in a physical form; it makes me feel as if I can bottle up time in a painting.

About me

Julia Chwascinska

Why am I so interested in everyday life and the experience of it? At times, it feels like a rather unique fascination but other times it makes me think that many of us are finding it extraordinary. Extraordinary in a sense that each of us, each of those billions of people on the planet are living the same day but that day is completely different for each of us. We all feel things differently and see through our eyes in a different light. Our senses are wired in the same but distinct way. All the events that we go through and feel through tend to be forgotten after we die. In fact, some of them tend to be erased from our memory months, weeks, days or even hours after the event. Therefore, how do we revisit those emotions of the past, how do we re-kindle them not only in our brains but also in our physicality?

This is what I’m essentially trying to do, I am bottling up those memories in the form of paintings. They become the carriers, the traces of felt emotions, lived through moments that I can see in front of my eyes whenever I look at my work. I am the only person who can view the image of myself painting the artwork at the time - what setting I was in, what my mood was on that day, what day it was, was I listening to music, was I sitting down, standing up, crouching? Those paintings are often mash ups of recent events, my most felt emotions during that time, things that have happened to me, places/people I was surrounded by or simply shapes/colours I have been fascinated with recently. They portray my life during a certain period of time, secretly closing in what I’ve been through.

Artist Statement