Acrylic and oil on canvas, 140 x 100 cm, signed and dated on the back.
The painting is from the series "Uchanie Bend."It isabout the bend just behind the artist's house, where she grew up. It was overgrown with bushes, behind them grew an old feral fruit orchard, further on there were fields, a Jewish cemetery and a cemetery. This burdock seemed to have always been growing in this place. This is the space of many childhood events, and the bushes and lush weeds were the subject of various fantasies, often full of horror. Children used to play with burdock balls, throwing them at each other like snowballs, and they easily stuck to everything, especially clothes and hair.
Grazyna Smalej was born in 1976 in the Lublin region. She is a graduate of the Faculty of Painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Cracow. She defended her diploma in2001. In 1998-2001 she received a scholarship from Hans Bernhardt (Germany). In 2001 she received the Grand Prix of the Minister of Culture in the Marian Michalik Competition for Young Painters in Częstochowa. She is a multiple finalist in the Bielska Jesien Biennale of Polish Painting. She has held many solo exhibitions and participated in many group exhibitions at home and abroad, including the Saatchi Gallery in London (Continental Shift, 2014), Lambertville in the United States (May Day, 2015) and Göttingen in Germany (2011). Her works are in private collections and institutions around the world - in Europe, the United States, Australia, China, Japan and many other countries.
