oil on canvas, 100x80cm
March 2020 in London, when the whole world is going into lockdown. I am standing in front of the easel and imagining places I lived in, Africa, Far East and wondering if they exist anymore as I remember them?
The nightmare of the Coronavirus began in London. I was talking to my friend in France in early April, we are locked up, she said, I am hungry, shops have nothing on the shelves. Bloody hell, I said… Cauchemar, she said.
Created in the ‘lockdown’ climate in London, April 2020.
I was trying to cross Hammersmith Bridge, people avoiding each other, after a while, I gave up, I didn’t know anymore if I was avoiding people or shadows. Even if I missed the person, his shadow couldn’t be avoided.
Is the age of air travel over?
How will our future ocean crossings look?
oil on canvas 76x100cm
'Kitchen God' - exhibited in Summerhall Gallery, Edinburgh. (artist talk recorded by Summerhall TV).
Along my journeys through far away countries and continents, every house, hut, dwelling full of people and hospitality, always had some sort of a vessel for boiling water. Tea, coffee, sweet honey, maybe a cinnamon stick, but always a hot drink, ready to welcome a visitor.
So, this is a kettle. The kitchen god.
Oil on canvas, 100x76cm
'Svalbard. Climate Change' - oil on canvas, 2x2,50m
Honorary Jury Award at Biennale of Paintings in Poland, 2011.
After a journey through Svalbard Archipelago, Spitsbergen and hopping off a ship in a small boat to explore the old, abandoned explorers’ boats, glaciers, the Russian station, the Pyramid… The unforgettable light, the midnight sun…
Six individual paintings, displayed as one.
'Bird', 'Man: Exploration', 'Polar Fox'
'Polar Bear', 'Whale' 'Kamchatka Crab'
'Mistery of Neptune'
After traveling to Svalbard Archipelago…Spitzbergen. SOLD
oil and oil bar, on canvas 70x100cm
'Broken Rainbow'
Selected for Biennale of Paintings in Poland, 2014.
oil on canvas dyptych, 2x2m
Inspired by an opera by Stanislaw Moniuszko.
Oil on canvas 100x76cm
'Composer'
oil on canvas 100x70cm
After I fractured my wrist, I was forced to paint with my left hand. Those paintings appeared to be quite different from my 'normal', right handed ones. As though my brain wasn't involved in creating them. The cat was climbing all over me and I wondered, who was comforting whom?
oil on canvas, 100x70cm
Part of the series ‘It’s Dreams We Miss, not Places’
oil on canvas, 30x30cm
Memory of the times living in Hong Kong. I went to Kowloon Walled City once, before it was demolished. Drug addicts, destitute and desperate in dark alleys, hollowed out faces, figures sitting, standing, sleeping. The title is a line from the Bible, psalm 102.
'Don't Look Back'
....who knows what you might see...
Oil on canvas, 100x70cm
'Uncertainty of Night'
oil on canvas, 100x70cm
I like wandering at night…
'The Hunter Hunted'
My friend, Raya, likes this one. (RIP, Raya)
oil on canvas, 60x60cm
'Where Do I Go From Here?'
oil on canvas 1x1m
from the series of 6 paintings, called ‘Requiem’ when exhibited together.
'Envy'
The first one of my attempts at seven deadly sins. The inspiration was a grave stone with some moss on it, which looked like the images of sculls to me, (see the left top corner). I was wondering at the time, if I am envious of the person lying in the grave...
oil on canvas 100x70cm
'One Day I saw You In My Dream'
oil on canvas 1x1m
from the series of 6 paintings, called ‘Requiem’ when exhibited together.
'Air on the G-string'
oil on canvas, 100x76cm
'The Scull'
oil on canvas, 120x85cm
One of my oldest paintings, this one, 1986.
Selected for ING Discerning Eye, 2020. SOLD
Oil and oil pastel on canvas.
Selected for ING Discerning Eye 2020.
oil on canvas
Exhibition in Bohema Gallery and Auction House, Warsaw 2019. ‘Constant Travellers’ - paintings from memories of living in different places, Iran - Tehran, Cairo, Africa and Far East.
There are also paintings inspired by the poetry book ‘Dialogi Asymetryczne’ - Danuta Galecka-Krajewska published by Oficyna Wydawnicza Volumen)
Oil on canvas, 100x100cm - SOLD
Oil on canvas, 70x65cm. - SOLD
Inspired by the poem Relacje by Danuta Galecka-Krajewska. My title is slightly different in translation from Polish, but the poem talks about ‘tying the escaping light, broken mirrors of my fleeting eternity’.
Living in Africa was an experience that affected me for the rest of my life.
Oil on canvas, 70x60cm
Inspired by the poem ‘Pejzaz’ by Danuta Galecka-Krajewska. Mysterious poem, original title Pejzaz, which in English translates as Landscape. I took one of the line from the poem as my title, as I thought it more in line with my feelings when I was reading it.
oil on canvas 100x76cm
Oil on Canvas, 10x65cm
Now, that was a challenge but I couldn’t help being attracted to that poem, (by Danuta Galecka-Krajewska), even though I don’t play Sudoku. Well, maybe I am an amateur? There is a line where she describes ‘ a tired musical note in B-minor key…’ . That’s the right bottom corner, I am assured by a musician that it is the B-moll. (B-minor chord).
Oil on canvas, 100x70cm
That’s how is was when I was living in Hong Kong for many years and travelled around the South East Asia. Hanoi had just bicycles then. You couldn’t cross the road. To do that, you had to simply close your eyes and just walk into the oncoming river of bikes navigating around you, closing eyes from fear. And fast. Quickly…. Hanoi was wonderful.
Oil on canvas 70x65cm.
Inspired by the poem Telefon Zaufania, by Danuta Galecka-Krajewska.
Helpline
Those who that night
were desperately searching for
the number of your helpline
must have known
that for a long time
you have waited
for someone to believe in
the random hearts
on the tired palm
and the unresolved question
enriched by the black humour
of the all-knowing boy scout.
Tell me honestly
could you still hear
the persistent ring
of an old-fashioned phone
when you started out
on your sleepy wanderings
to the infinite Land of Your Eternal Hunting Grounds.
Oil on canvas 100x76cm
I lived in Tehran in 1978 and was caught up in the revolution and overthrow of the Shah of Iran. The idyllic life around the bazaar, where I could wander freely with my young Iranian and Armenian friends changed overnight into a nightmare, although it started as a genuine movement for more freedom. We had to be evacuated with guards pointing guns though our car’s window. But I still miss Esfahan, Shiraz, Persepolis… and the pomegranate stew.
To hide in the shadow of abandoned words, and walk into love through the back door….
…to push a bulky armchair so close to the door, that nobody, but an accidental Icarus, could disturb the slowing down pulse of my disappointed dreams.
- from the poetry of Danuta Galecka-Krajewska ‘Dialogi Asymetryczne’
A friend asked; ‘Is it….?’
‘Yes. It is…’
oil on canvas 100x70cm
oil on canvas, 100x76cm 2019
Pastel selected by Nicholas Serota, for Whitechapel Open exhibition in 1987.
Bought by a prominent film art director, not saying who, but think private Ryan….
Illustration for Bonnie Tyler record 'Straight From The Heart' - CBS Records. Selected for D&AD Awards. Exhibited in Cooper Hewitt Museum, New York.
After a trip to New York. Late at night, the metro trains with graffitti, the young couple were going back from a concert.
pastel, collage 76x56cm. 1988
Warsaw again, my place, my heart…
pastel, 56x76cm, 1998
I was working in Soho then, design company in Greek Street and there was this woman hanging out of a window opposite… no clothes. Sometimes, late at night, (yes, we worked nights on IBM and other stuff), she would come out into the street and dance….
pastel 56x76cm 1988
Pastel, 2016, painted at the charity concert in Ognisko Club, in Kensington, organised by Regina Taylor.
1999 it was back to living in Warsaw for a little while. Never tired of Warsaw…
A very Polish story, landscape that is almost disappearing now.
pastel, 56x76cm
After living in Hong Kong, it was Poland and Katowice. The mines, the steelworks, sometimes I would see those strange looking men, as though they had masks on, as though some dragon frightened them…
pastel 56x76cm 1999.
All we wanted to see in Cracow as children was The Dragon of Wawel’. Smok Wawelski….
pastel 56x76cm
There is a clip from a newspaper that I collaged to this pastel. Someone writes complainig about their shopping. They bought some fish, put on the kitchen counter, and it glowed in the dark… So, he was wondering about the pollution of seas and oceans that we cause…. This was 1999.
pastel 56x76cm
In the Old City of Warsaw.
pastel 56x76cm
Halong Bay, Vietnam, far from anywhere, on a junk, the caves want to swallow you up…
pastel 56x76cm
pastel, 76x58cm
Warsaw, a long time ago. Imagine, a little girl playing with her friends. A man walks into a room to help them with their game and rolls up his sleeves. She sees a strange number on his arm… ‘What’s that?’ she asks. ‘Nothing..’ the sleeve comes down. Her cousin whispers; ‘He got it in the camp…’ Oh, the camp… She lights up. imagine, the bomb fire, the baking potatoes, the forrest, the fun, the scouts’ games, the summer camp… So, she tattoos all her dolls. Her mother throws them out. She is left with one doll she couldn’t tattoo, the black one. Years later, at the funeral of a man with a tattoo, she learns that he was one of the children dr.Mengele experimented on, in Auschwitz. His twin brother died in the camp. He survived with one lung.
This pastel was started after a traumatic personal experience in in Hong Kong and finally finished in 2023. Never exhibited.
The first Edition of 50 with one, green zebra, was sold out in Royal Academy Summer Exhibition 2012. The second Edition 50, has still few works available. This work is in Robert Hiscox collection, prof. Tim Spector, writer Catriona Wilson and many other collectors.
The 'E-Migration' series of graphics was conceived after living in Africa. It also touches on my love of Phillip Glass music and makes me think of my son, a musician, who is colour blind and cannot see my red zebra.
Imagine all those zebras running into a different dimension.... Snow?
And I mean, the ONE in front....
Drawing in a form of Chinese scroll, 85cm in height and 9 metres long in total. Exstracts of my Diary exhibited includes a lot of ranting to God and accusing him of being a supreme Sadist. A bit of CS Lewis thrown in here. Generally, about unfairness of life. The walking stick with an elephant here is here, too. On display about 4,5 metres seen.
Yes, it is spiders.... I know, not reasonable, they are small and afraid of me. I know.... But they don't know it..
This graphic work is based on my photograph at the back of the garden in winter. Lurking there, in the snow, with my camera, suddenly I felt something on my head. The creature was running down my arm, it's spindly legs trying to find safe heaven… Fear…
I was living in Hong Kong. I went to Kowloon Walled City before it was demolished. Dark alleys, drug addicts…. This hollow face man was sitting against the wall, motionless, hopeless, waiting, looking….
Ronald Dworkin, 'Religion Without God', 'Justice For Hedgehogs' his great books and theories. I made this work after he died, in 2013. Do pink dolphins exist, even if we don't see them?
The image was made after I've seen a dry growth of roots on the wall I had been passing by, every day. The roots were trying to get somewhere, searching for something. Every day there were new growths in different direction, trying for freedom.
What are we searching for? Who knows what the future will bring. Life is like water, time passes, a dream never stops, we cross more borders in our search for Eden.
Series of graphics made after reading 'The Guest Cat' by Takashi Hiraide. They were exhibited in Tokyo and Kyoto in 2015, part of EWAAC - East West Art Award competition. (my cat was very impressed...)
Series of graphics made after reading 'The Guest Cat' by Takashi Hiraide. They were exhibited in Tokyo and Kyoto in 2015, part of EWAAC - East West Art Award competition. (my cat was very impressed, since she doesn't ever do this...)
Series of graphics made after reading 'The Guest Cat' by Takashi Hiraide. They were exhibited in Tokyo and Kyoto in 2015, part of EWAAC - East West Art Award competition. (my cat was very impressed...) A bit darker, this one.
There she is, sleeping.... Digital drawing on my mobile phone.
Cat, checking her food....
Not too bad, life.....
Reading paper, don't disturb...
Tales of the Underground. Drawings on the mobile phone. Colours linked to the colours of the London Tube Lines.
The idea started long time ago, after a visit to New York for the exhibition of European Illustration in Cooper Hewitt Museum. I had an illustration selected there, a record cover for Bonnie Tyler. Encountered New York graffiti covered trains and started to draw people in the metro. Then, London Transport Advertising commissioned an illustration.
Now, I draw people on the underground trains on my mobile, imagining what they think or do. It is more private than iPad or paper drawing, as people imagine I am just texting. Some were published as ‘Artful Faces’ in ‘Nowy Czas from 2012.
- ©Joanna Ciechanowska
‘I Am Drunk’ - District Line
Angry Youth - Northern Line
I can hear colours.... Central Line
City Man, trouble in the bear market, going to The Bank - Victoria Line.
I Am Going To Tate Britain - Bakerloo Line
Romek Marber - graphic desinger
Elizabeth Stanhope - ceramic artist
Raya Herzig, an artist.
Lady Belhaven and Stenton
Lord Belhaven and Stenton
Cwizewicz brothers, violinists.
Irena Delmar, an actress
Andrzej Klimowski, graphic designer, illustrator, prof. Royal College of Art
Andrzej Krauze, cartoonist
Peter Fudakowski, film director, producer.
This advertising campaign was done for IBM for the Application System of their first PC. I worked for Lock Pettersen then, and my design and illustration was chosen for posters, brochures etc. That was before Microsoft Windows, by the way. The poster ‘Share Your View’ was chosen for the exhibition of European Illustration D&AD Awards and exhibited in New York, Paris and Stockholm.
oil on canvas, 76x60cm
oil on canvas, 76x60cm
Small drawing, pencil on paper
