Martyna Wolanin
Degree: BA Fine Art
University: Carmarthen School of Art
Graduation Year: 2022
New Blood Art Commentary
Martyna Wolanin’s paintings are immediately delightful. Her material is personal: memories of times with family and friends that she lays down in paint. The acrylics are thickly daubed, evoking a labour of love. Their effect is deliberate and pixelated. Figures will look toward or away from us, as in photographs.
The simplicity of these paintings belies beguiling insight. The artist employs various technical conceits to interrogate how one looks at the past. Figures will, in fact, become clearer when the viewer stands at a greater distance from the works, paralleling the distance of retrospect, through which experiences become clearer to use. Sometimes she uses diptychs, splitting the painting between two halves: manifesting the understanding (present) of the experience (past), that complement each other, but don’t totally match up: an affecting duality, this layering of looking. The works remain slightly blurred, with information partially withheld. These painted scenes contain the knowledge that you can’t replicate the past, but take comfort in the insight that the present gleans from it.
Artist Statement
I base my work on my life experiences, my family members and friends, with a mix of my life in Poland and the UK. As we go through life, we do not take the time to appreciate the tiny, little things and moments until they are gone. We are in such a haze that we do not fully grasp if an experience was good or bad until it is long gone. Reminiscing through memories of my childhood, I find comfort by looking through rose-tinted glasses and I can stand back and appreciate these moments for what they are. I can only now see how important these moments are, they have shaped me into who I am today. The layers of thick paint that I use in my pieces are used to evoke a sense of wonder. In the paintings, when you walk closer to them, you can see each palette knife stroke and every colour used under each square, as each colour was carefully picked to represent the feelings of that moment for me. As you walk away from the painting, the figures become more clear. These paintings were made from personal memories and I want the viewer to wonder what is going on and question what it is they see on each piece I created.