‘Place of Seclusion’ - 'Miejsce odosobnienia'

​In this new series of paintings, I draw inspiration from ancient cave frescoes found in the eastern Mediterranean and Caucasus from research trips made in 2018 and 2019. Hermit monks spent long periods in isolation, devoting many years to the creation of vast pictorial paintings in natural caves. An early form of lockdown art. The new work combines vivid pictorial flatness with elaborate motif layers using fabric cut-out reliefs and plumes of background colour. Some paintings are vividly diagrammatic, using block colour symbol forms on a geometrically segmented canvas. Ancient references to death, the sacred and nature are reimagined for a contemporary canvas, a new vocabulary for a period of inwardness, isolation, spiritual questioning and ambivalence.