Artist focus: Hanna Sidorowicz

Artist focus: Hanna Sidorowicz

from January 15, 2020

From her years at the Fine Arts School of Gdansk in Poland, Hanna has been captivated by medieval and Renaissance painting. The symbolism, the imagination, the enchantment-- which at that time was communicated only through frescoes, stained glass windows and religious paintings -- gave life a metaphysical touch that we have lost sight of today. From Velasquez's meninas to cherubs and libraries, discover the many inspirations of this extraordinary painter, her creative process and her aspirations.

Like many artists, she is inspired by everything that surrounds us, but with an irrepressible desire to highlight the invisible. Other painters have done it before, like the Meninas for example, a theme that was taken up by Picasso who himself reinterpreted the work of Velasquez. And it was when she saw Picasso's series that she in turn was inspired by these symbolic figures of fleeting youth, of nascent femininity and of imperceptibly developing personalities. Hanna usually paints on paper, which she then pastes onto canvas. As for the colour red, she uses egg paint called "tempera", for the brilliance of the colour. As far as the creative aspect of her work is concerned, everything lies in the process, the repetition, the duration.

Today, she explores a new theme which is that of our reconnection with nature. By adorning the human figure with angel wings made of vegetal branches, she wanted to work on this contemporary need to reconnect with our origins, while keeping an eye towards the future. The idea of interweaving, too, is important to her and is the subject of a new series she started. She creates brush weaves to symbolize the invisible links that connect us to each other and to the world. What she wishes to share ? To offer, for a moment, the possibility of evading into a world that is more mystical than tangible, into an imaginary world that we sometimes lose consciousness of in the frenzy of daily life.

See all the works of Hanna Sidorowicz