Handmade paper is patient, but requires discipline of calming down and concentration. Ceramics is a technology, but also the space in which we can experiment. Other areas of my activities consist in unremitting penetration of possibilities and personal creation. It is assumed that the effect of work is an object that should cause the viewer’s reaction and offer another artistic experience.

We all consist of experiences and the past. These elements build our future. The pandemic period has cancelled all our group activities. Alienated, isolated, we are presented with a great opportunity to make an artistic “examination of conscience”. The 40th anniversary of my artistic work obliges me to make such a summary. Apart from my artistic career, I have been involved in teaching for many years. Being a certified teacher, I had a fantastic opportunity to observe many developing personalities, many curious young people, the so-called “promising” artists. This was a tremendous responsibility, but now, after many years, I know how essential this experience was to me. Keeping in touch with my past students I realize that art has been an extremely important place for all of us, it has been a place where different generations can be united. I am still searching. I am still discovering incredible possibilities on the edges of various techniques of artistic expression. I penetrate various technologies and combine them in an unconventional way. I am making the most of the centuries of Japanese experiences and magical processes of hand-making paper. The rigor of photography, making a textile, the discipline of ceramic technologies, handmade and machine embroidery, drawing, colors in pastels and watercolors, batik and shibori.

All the above technological combinations offer interesting effects. They constitute an exciting and refreshing approach to another challenge, an experiment with material and an interdisciplinary statement. Once, an art critic asked me why I do not focus on one field, why I do not develop a single way of artistic expression. My answer was very simple – I always discover something new and I find it fascinating. I do not want to limit myself. I want to seek. Having humbleness and distance to my art, I realize that I still lack so many skills and I want to master them! Inspired by the surrounding world I react to various stimuli. In all my areas of work I avoid unnecessary and useless embellishments. I introduce as many elements as I need into my activities, instinctively feeling that sometimes even a single, unnecessary element would transform into a “verbose” ornament, thus disturbing the clarity of thought and message. In my opinion, art is a language of communicating in a simple, economical and direct way. My stay in Japan taught me to focus on centuries of tradition and craft.

Art gives me freedom. It has literally saved my life a couple of times. And there is no pretentiousness or exaggeration in it. Art allowed me to go through the most difficult moments, it awoke my vital forces, it aroused my dreams and confidence that I can make them come true. I should write here that I am a fulfilled artist, but I will not do it, as it may sound now as resignation from further activities. And I do hope that I will be able to create till the end of my days and that art will always accompany me, giving me joy and satisfaction. The pandemic time has demonstrated how vital the contact with “live” viewers is to all of us. It is the viewers that allow us to see the reflection of our actions, their reaction to what we create motivates us to work. It is essential to see the effects and to feel the power of action. Having worked alone in our atelier, we need interaction with the viewers during the exhibition. I do hope that the pandemic time, which coincides with my jubilee of artistic work, is not the time lost. I am looking forward to meeting the viewers and to the new openings in the post-pandemic reality.