Dorota Podlaska “Love Letters” 8.03 – 1.04.2001

Art treated as intimate confession, narrative and figurative, is my own letter to viewers, painted with hope that people will see mirror reflection of their lives in my pictures. I also hope to fill the boring and pretentious gap between “ordinary” people and “contemporary arts”.

Painting serves me also as escape from reality, everyday misfortune, difficult relationships, disappointments, lack of understanding. But there is no escape – reality strikes back, jumps into canvas as unfaithful lover, ready to chop off his hand in an attempt to escape from woman, frigid husband loving only his Whiskey bottle, cynical machos eating naive virgins alive.

Fortunately we all have powerful weapons against those misfortunes – humor and irony. Wit can free us from bad spell and art can, because I believe that art is magic, and pictures can be self-fulfilling prophecies. Tonight, with hope, I shall paint another happy-end.

Dorota Podlaska, December 2000

Dorota Podlaska – Curriculum
Graduated from Department of Fine Arts of Mikolaj Kopernik University in Torun, Poland (Master of Arts degree in 1987). 1986-1989 she was involved in happening and film activities of artistic groups Naprzod and Yach Films. She is a member of Artistic Society “Wieza Cisnien” and staff member of Leon Wyczolkowski Museum in Bydgoszsz. Dorota Podlaska’s activities include painting, textile and installations. She uses pictures to create objects and site-specific installations.
Selected Exhibitions: 
-I Cry At The Movies, Center for Contemporary Art, Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw (Poland) 2000
-Earth, Air, Heaven, Museum Okregowe im. Leona Wyczolkowskiego Bydgoszsz (Poland) 1999
–Oikos, Museum Okregowe, Bydgoszsz 1998
-Meitheal, Manorhamilton (Ireland), 1998
-There’s Never Enough of Valor, International Meeting of Artists, Borne Sulimowo (Poland), 1998
-Pictures, Wieza Cisnien, Konin (Poland), 1998
-The Christmas Surprise, Galeria Wieza Cisnien, Bydgoszsz, 1997
-Dorota Podlaska, Galeria Podlaska, Biala Podlaska’96
-The Letters, Klub Mozg, Bydgoszsz, 1995

“Love Letters” is the title of a work, where pictures are packed in a post office cabinet used for sorting out letters. Painted portraits of lovers, facing each other, happiness, sorrow, hatred, fears shared by couples.

“Love Letters” can also be the title for all my miniature pictures painted in recent years. Their themes are love, dreams, nostalgia, longing, betrayals and happy-endings. I have always been using art as my diary, record of observations taken from woman’s point of view, filtered by her feelings and emotions. Mostly women are heroines of my pictures. Casted in their everyday life roles of housewives and mothers, they try to add color to their existence by dreaming of eternal love, heroes rescuing them from any oppression, romantic lovers covering them with flowers, Chippendales at their service. Those dreams have their origins in Hollywood films and Brasilian soap opera, so my paintings are based on comic-like, pop and mass media images.