Anna was born and raised in Poland. She graduated with honors from the Nicolaus Copernicus University of Torun, Faculty of Fine Arts. She holds a master’s degree in Art Conservation and a diploma in Teaching Fine Arts. For over the last 14 years she has been living and working in Ireland. She has gained experience in the Irish Heritage field and in teaching arts and crafts. Anna continues her personal development as an artist. She is exploring different arts techniques like drawing, stained glass, mosaic, quilling, and many more. She likes to experiment with different media to create unique pieces.
“Art is my passion and my life. I express myself in a various medium of art. I don’t limit myself. I love to explore, discover, and challenge myself. I am learning and developing every day. I’m searching and testing new things in art. I am re-discovering art. I’m guided by intuition and inner voice. My draw my inspiration from world, nature, and people. In my work, I like to capture unique moments, people, and places.
I am an artist…”
My artworks refer to the growing phenomenon of domestic violence and loneliness during the pandemic.
“Silent” is made of disposable face masks to draw the attention of massive use of disposable hygiene products during a pandemic and these are polluting an environment.
Many people locked up in their houses, covered with masks, experience often silent violence. Stay at home, be quiet.
“Alone” refers to loneliness. We are all affected by in the pandemic, covered with masks, passing each other with no smile. We are in the crowd but staying apart. The artwork is a collage, which highlights the distance built up during pandemic.
Pawel is an artist and a designer, born in Poland and currently works in Dublin. He graduated from National Secondary Art School in Nowy Wisnicz and has a Masters of Museum Exhibition and Art Sacral -P.A.T in Krakow. He exhibited his paintings in several European countries including Latvia, Ireland, Poland and England.
Pawel presented his work at the Hunt Museum during the Polish Art Festival in September 2016. His portrait of Paul Brady has been printed on the side of a building in Temple Bar, The Icon Factory, which is located in the historical centre of Dublin.
Pawel strives to portray a diverse world, bringing in themes of tolerance, loneliness, love, and longing, often in a humorous and subtle way. One of his favourite motifs is that of a woman, often of an unrealistically large size. Painted in many different ways, she is a symbol of fertility and maternity.
The first lockdown in Ireland was a special time, full of sun but also fears and worries. Travel restrictions prompted me to seek beauty in what is closest to me. I drew inspiration from the places that I know well in the centre of Dublin, but so far underestimated.
I visited Blessington Park every day and enjoyed its beauty. It was with great pleasure that I watched the mother swan with her new born hatchlings, calm and dignified, completely indifferent to the unfolding panic.
The time of the Pandemic brought many thoughts about what is most important in life, and what we often forget.
The abundance that the world gives us is around us and I encourage you to learn to notice it and redirect your attention to it.
Abundance I
Abundance II
Abundance IX
Bull Island
Happeny Bridge
O’Connell street Dublin
Iwona is Polish artist based in Ireland with a degree from Faculty of Art, The Jan Dlugosz University in Czestochowa.
Her paintings explore the relationship between the colour, abstract art, action painting and expressionism. She has always been fascinated by children’s art, calligraphy, Aboriginal art and African art from which she draws her artistic directions. She mentions three artists from her home country who have had a influence on her artwork, this is: Jacek Malczewski, Piotr Potworowski and Jerzy Nowosielski.
In her artistic practice she uses bold colors, scratched, rusty surfaces and outlines of the silhouettes of people, boats, trees and birds. She often paints non-figurative artworks which can be described as colourful mindscapes. She creates in acrylic paints and also in clay as a ceramist.
As a person working in a non-art industry, isolation was different for me than it was for most people. For the first time in years, I had a lot of time to paint and I was able to paint freely.
I would divide this time into two phases:
Kevin is a full time artist, illustrator and mural painter based in Dublin. Kevin came back to art in his mid-thirties after a long break. Since 2011 he has had five solo exhibitions in Dublin. He has taken part in numerous group shows, live-painting events and festivals.
Kevin is a volunteer at The Icon Factory artist-based charity in Temple Bar. They help support local artists through commission free exhibition space and help promote Irish culture through art and education. He has worked facilitating creative workshops and mural painting events with schools, youth groups and drug rehabilitation centres.
Kevin is a big fan of tribal and psychedelic art, character based pieces and works in digital illustration, pen and ink and acrylic paint. However large scale mural painting is his passion. He has painted many public and private commission murals in Dublin and around Ireland. He has taken part in many street-art festivals including The All City Jam, Evolve Urban Art Jam, Electric Picnic Artlot, the Longford Cruthú Art Festival, Waterford Walls International Street Art Festival and Memphis Paint.
I selected a number of pen and ink drawings that I created this year that are directly related to the COVID 19 pandemic and my own way of dealing with it. The immediacy of putting pen to paper is sometimes the best way to express yourself, helping you to work through your emotions in a positive way, quick strokes and ink washes, unfussy and direct. I usually start by putting a few marks on the page and seeing what comes out, almost like automatic drawing. Other times I will have a flash of inspiration and will try my best to create this image on paper.
The first set of five drawings are part of my “ISOLATION” series. These were created during the initial lockdown from March to May of this year. I had a regular chest infection at the start of the lockdown and I had to self-isolate in my bedroom for 14 days. I used this time to start sketching and drawing again, something I had not done in a few months.
These drawings reflect the sinister absurdity of our new reality (the hospital video footage from Italy, the daily updates, the death tolls, the infection statistics, people bulk buying toilet rolls?) and the sketching helped me deal with these ‘new-normal’ emotions such as cabin-fever, tension and anxiety we all had to work through.
Some of the drawings helped me explore the other side-effects of lockdown; the social distancing and the two-meter rule, the almost automatic reaching out for your phone (like a digital security blanket) resulting in an upsurge in social-media activity and the inner-struggle to try not get caught up in this virtual world and like the cartoonists of the past, creating some good old gallows humour drawings to help process the almost darkly-humorous and surrealistic existence that we faced as our day-to-day lives changed almost overnight.
The second set of ink drawings (Outpost / Sleep / Hide / Ominous) I created as part of this year’s INKTOBER Challenge which is an Instagram based drawing challenge whereby you are given 31 prompt words for the month of October to draw and post online. This INKTOBER it is of no surprise that COVID or Pandemic references seeped into people’s drawings including my own.
Karolina was born in Nowy Targ, Poland. She is a charismatic highlander. Graduate of the State Secondary School of Fine Arts of A. Kenar in Zakopane and a graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts. E. Geppert in Wrocław – in the field of Sculpture.
She took part in the international exchange of Erasmus students at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Lecce in Italy, where she explored the secrets of Italian classicism. She participated in the nationwide exchange of students MOST at the Academy of Fine Arts J. Matejko in Krakow, Poland. During her studies, she trained her artistic skills at ALCA ceramic studio in Malta.
In her work, she interweaves various styles, techniques and fields of art. A citizen of the world with a passion for travel. Currently, she lives and works in London, but her heart belongs to her hometown of Podhale region.
Presents a series of photographic works
“If you think adventures can be dangerous, try routine. She is lethal.”
Paulo Coelho
I was just about to go for a trip around the world. And after my return, take another life journey through life, the wedding! Life travels. Nothing of that! Life goes on and I won’t say it out loud because I’m grateful for what I have “But what kind of life is that?”
Somewhere in the back of my head, this question keeps bothering me. Closure – it’s not for me. I’m suffocating. I can sit in one place for years, but I have to be able to be aware that I can go out, sail out, fly out, TRAVEL! I want to scream!
“If we were destined to be in one place, we’d have roots instead of feet.”
Rachel Wolchin
Gary was born in Hong Kong to his Chinese migrant parents. Although brought up in a traditional Chinese family, the colonial society and the foreign cultures influenced his upbringing profoundly. Japanese manga and animation were two main interests during Gary’s teenagehood. Reading manga and watching animation was a daily routine and attempts of drawing and imitating manga characters was Gary’s favourite hobby. During the time when Gary was living in London, an art student flat-mate stirred up the artistic interests in him. Together, they visited galleries and museums both in London and Paris many times. The French impressionists, especially, Claude Monet and Edgar Degas made huge impacts on Gary artistically. In 2013, Gary started his study in Limerick School of Art and Design. Among all the disciplines, he founded on ceramic, sculpture and painting and painting was nominated as his major at the end of his first year study. Gary subsequently graduated from LSAD in June 2017, conferred with second class, grade one honours degree in Fine Art, Painting. In November 2017, Gary joined the Wickham Street Studio in Limerick, which is a long standing art studio for more than a decade in the city of Limerick.
2019 is an attempt to record a global phenomena of turmoil, agitations, violence and pandemic of not only hygiene nature but also political and economical starting from year 2019 up until now.
The work is merely an observation rather than a statement or any kind of political preference. The lack of details and blurriness in this work is my deliberate efforts to weaken connections from the source of image which may allow viewers to associate the work with the realities of their own.
