Drawing on the language of 17th-century Dutch art, with its ready-made gravitas, mortality, fragility, ostentation, I have been staging narratives using digital collage, photographs, oversized flowers, kitsch objects, and ornaments, investigating the tension between high and low art.

The aggressive fairies respond to the well-known photograph of a bare-chested Putin riding a horse, which epitomises, to me, the hyper-macho posturing prevalent in today’s politics. The symbolic shrinking of violence and aggression to a minimal size renders it harmless.

My cultural heritage shapes the resulting paintings, a blend of Polish exotica and Cockney humour that influences the work atmospherically, emotionally, and aesthetically. Lockdown 2020 gave me time to take an in-depth look at the flora and fauna of the domestic garden and to reevaluate it as subject matter alongside art historical sources. I now grow and photograph my own flowers, using the bouquet as a stage or backdrop, to intertwine my daily living with my art practice.

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BA(Hons) in Fine Art  at Bristol Polytechnic

Postgraduate scholarship funded by the Polish government and the British Arts Council  for study at Krakow Academy of Fine Art in Poland 

Vice President and Academician at Royal West of England Academy, Bristol

Studio holder at Top Floor Studios, Spike Island, Bristol