World Fine Art Professionals and their Key-Pieces, 204, Ewa Malijewska

 

World Fine Art Professionals and their Key-Pieces, 204, Ewa Malijewska
Ewa Malijewska makes colorful paintings and watercolors and graphic work in black and white. She tells me more about it in the café of The Hague Filmhouse (Filmhuis Den Haag). Ewa was born in Gdynia and grew up in Gdansk on the Polish Baltic coast.

After high school, she studied at the Royal Academy for Visual Arts in The Hague and has been active as an artist in Rotterdam for many years.
Life is sometimes beautiful and sometimes oppressive, is her experience. That is reflected in her works. On the one hand colorful impressions of nature in her paintings and watercolors and on the other hand people in black and white in all their desolation in her graphic prints.

On the other side of the mirror
She wants to look at the ‘other side of the mirror’, she says. “My work is about my life. That is full of the absurd. Drama, dreams, tensions and all kinds of thoughts. But at the same time there are feelings, joy and pleasure. “

Life has its light and dark sides. Those are two sides of the coin, both sides are part of it. “They are inseparable from each other. The figurative graphic work deals with the dramatic aspects of life. It touches the vague boundaries of ‘reality’, there are apocalyptic scenes with neurotic half-dead people.” The paintings have bold strokes with intense, abstract colors. “Those colors scream to feel, to touch, to see, to smell, to taste, to experience, to be. It is without name, without speech, living, enjoying existence without judgment, sin does not exist. It is not about good and bad, but about vitality. “
And that vitality and the pleasure collides with the suffering and the secret of evil. I ask her if she can elaborate on this after two examples of her work: a colorful painting and a black and white print.

Nocturn
She shows the painting ‘Nocturn’. There are flowers and bushes to see that let the whole environment – in green and blue – vibrate. “It is connected to the world of music. I used to play piano, including Chopin, and sung in a choir. The nocturnes of Chopin have intimate, dreamy, poetic tones. The melody has rich and refined decorations. There is contrast, drama and lively action. When you hear it you get in a special mood, you seem enchanted. The melancholic soul moves in the corridors of heaven and earth with its waters and juices evaporates, as it were. Your senses are filled with lust for that sensual beauty.” The work was exhibited in 2016 at the ‘enter into art’ exhibition in Cologne.

Dream wrap
That enchanting feeling quickly disappears with the print ‘Dream wrap’. In black and white we see a square dream being unpacked. You see extended hands in the waves of the ocean. “The hands ask for help. They are in purgatory – between heaven and hell. The playfulness and absorption of colors and shapes has been destroyed. The apocalypse and the final judgment is coming. The oneiric (dreamy) silhouette wants to equip behind the water curtain forever. It reminds me of Lacrimosa, the requiem of Mozart, that I once sang in a choir. “

Ewa Malijewska’s transformation of her life into art is expressed in very different images that still have a connection. “I experience life as a mystery, a miracle, a goal in itself,” she says. My art is a form of determination. It is about living, feeling, and receiving energies. Art and reflection about it is an attempt to create a unity with myself, a reconciliation. You make shapes out of nothing, you make dead matter alive, you give something that is bothering you a place and can therefore let things go. It is almost a necessity for me, almost compulsive. “
Does she have a key work? “My key work has not yet been made. All my paintings and prints, all fragments of them are puzzle pieces for a story that is still to come. The story connects graphics with painting, line and color, intellect and emotion, flesh and soul. I strive to achieve a balance where life and love are the winners of death. “

Nail on the glass mountain
Being an artist is something you get when you are born, she says. “It is a mental construction, a way of thinking, feeling and being that does not make it easier for you to function in this world.” She made several attempts to adapt to the ‘real world’, to ‘switch’, not to feel that much anymore, but in the end she could only accept that she was an artist. “The unbearable was made bearable by art which was my liberation and redemption. It is the nail on the glass mountain. “

At high school in Gdansk she chose an ‘art profile’. She got a lot of drawing and painting, philosophy and art history. She then went to The Hague and graduated from the Royal Academy of Art (KABK). “I was always impressed by Dutch art and that was also the reason why I came to the Netherlands. The quest for liberation turned out to be ‘one way ticket’. It was no longer possible to feel rooted and mentally I became a different person. With freedom came loneliness – maybe it has always been there, or has even strengthened. Despite that, I am a social person and happy among the people. “

Close to the heart
She considers life as metaphysical art, full of surprises and adventures. “Every day is a secret and I want to experience it again and again, it does not lose its intensity. I like to be able to celebrate life and I find it a blessing to be close to my heart, an agreement with myself to be true to life. It is possible in the Netherlands and I am very grateful for it. I got a chance here and I’ve taken it (For the art sake). “

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9E6b3swbnWg
http://www.evaart.nl/en/
https://ifthenisnow.eu/nl/verhalen/de-wereld-van-de-rotterdamse-kunstenaar-39-ewa-malijewska