Malgosia:

I was born on a beautiful Baltic island off the northwestern aspect of Poland. From the ages of four to nineteen, I belonged to an artists’ studio led by the greatly admired teachers and artists, Zofia and Stanislaw Kuglin. At the age of eleven, I won a bronze medal at the International Painting competition in Finland, and at 17 and 18, participated in group exhibitions of large macramé collages. Ironically, art was deemed impractical as a profession: I was discouraged at such an early age that I forgot who I was as an artist.

My love of nature and biology was nurtured by my father, a naturalist and a commercial fisherman whose career involved many scientific ocean explorations. Upon coming to the United States at age 19, I pursued the study of biology, and received a B.S. from Trinity College and a Ph.D. in molecular and developmental biology from Tufts University and completed post-doctoral studies at Harvard Institute of Medicine.

During my life as a scientist, I explored the mysteries of form and function in living organisms on the objective level by sequencing and cloning DNA, and studying the proteins that it encoded. My studies further deepened my sense of the sublime beauty in the largest and tiniest of biological structures, and the remarkable complexity and diversity that is all around us.

In 2001, I began designing and making jewelry with natural gems and pearls, thus reconnecting with my artistic creativity. In 2006, I studied acrylic painting with Dorothy Gunther. I am privileged to continue my studies with Anthony Riccardi. I currently live in the Boston area with my wonderful husband Wil and our two daughters.

In my paintings, I further explore the mysteries of life: combining an objective with a more subjective understanding of the interconnection and sacredness of all life. My paintings depict abstract, biomorphic forms, full of sensuality and imbued with their innate energies. Invoking the beauty of the natural world, they manifest my connectedness to nature, to the collective consciousness of humanity, to myself as a woman, and to the divine in symbolic forms. They stand at the interface between the energies of matter and spirit.

I construct my work in numerous layers of diluted acrylic paint; it is a time-consuming and a meticulous way of painting, but essential to the look I desire to achieve: a smooth surface relatively free of brushstrokes, beautiful color, and clean-edged forms, and a unity of surface. This process allows me to perfect the forms which I see easily in my mind’s eye, and to refine the colors, so that they are the correct “energetic translations” of what I see.

About this series:

The series of Portals and Chalices paintings emerged from a deep transformative period in my life. The relative solitude of early mothering years (my daughters were born in 1997 and 1999), allowed me to simply be with the strong feeling that, despite my deep love and appreciation of biology, my life as a biologist was finished, and that a new artistic life was to unfold. These paintings arose from that void of not knowing, and they chronicle the emergence of my true self (e.g., Portal with Moon and Pearls and Coralline Chalice with Pearl) and my connecting with the deep layers of psyche and soul.

The early paintings in the series are mostly the ovoid-shaped portals which refer to the deepening of the feeling nature, and my relationship to myself as a woman. Any deep probing or exploration is inevitably accompanied by a sense of vulnerability and the strangeness of being on the edge of one’s growth process (e.g, Transgalactic Portal ), and the need for protection (e.g., Rose Thorn Portal). Feeling “too much” seemed almost unbearable at times, and yet growing as a person was unavoidable (The Leafy Portal); it was the only way to proceed with life. Neuronal Chalice has to do with sensing and experiencing the world more acutely: the perceptions and inputs that run through one’s nervous system, a deepening on the psychic level.

Transgalactic Portal Inversion is one of the transitional pieces, representing turning even more inward. The Flaming Portal portrays the transformational energy (like an alchemical process) of burning off residuum, leaving the inner space as the only quiet place. Grow Baby, Grow! and Only Love Remains summarize this growth process.

The Perfect Union is about a balance between the energies of earth (or body) and heaven (spirit), or the feminine/masculine energies; it is a piece imbued with the happiness and contentment of love. From this point, the series progresses from personal to transpersonal or universal in character and depicts a deepening on the spiritual level.

The heavenly rosettas (e.g. Green Rosetta Portal) and stemmed rosettas (e.g., Green & Orange Stemmed Rosetta Portal) represent my conceptualization of the movement of energy from the mental-spiritual planes, and the places from which the spirits or souls emerge on the way to becoming embodied on Earth.

Rosetta painting also carry my sense of connection with the mass consciousness of humanity. After these were painted, I was not surprised to read in C.G. Jung’s writings that the quaternary shape is one of the ancient mandala forms, seen in Paleolithic paintings or in the Navajo sand paintings used for ceremonial healing – these forms are part of our collective heritage. Orange and Blue Mandala Portal and Blue Energy Portal contain both meditative potential and a sense of dynamic movement. Blue and Gold Stemmed Rosetta is reminiscent of sacramental objects, especially the monstrance used in the Christian liturgy to hold the consecrated Host. The last painting of the series pays homage to the feminine energy, as women are the portals or the gates of the spirit. I use the color gold in these paintings as a symbol for the sacred, spiritual, divine or the soul and for the energy of love.

In summary, this body of work chronicles my reaching into the “inner space”, my being and becoming and reconnecting with my creativity, and has been a deep vessel of insight. It is a celebration of the richness and depth of our psychological, mental and spiritual potential as human beings. The dimensions of matter (sex) and spirit are not dichotomous, and create wholeness. My intention is that a sense of movement and growth, love and beauty which they possess will delight, intrigue, and entice the viewer to tune into the whisperings of their own souls and to enter their own inner spaces.