Dorota Łapa-Maik “Finding the Goddes”

curator Izabela Rogala

11 April - 12 May 2024, Defabryka, Warsaw

CURATORIAL TEXT

Dorota Łapa-Maik’s paintings reflect her philosophy of life. Artistic creation and everyday experience are two coherent, interpenetrating planes, from which emerges the image of a woman who is searching, aware, passionate and celebrating life.

The artist paints by combining her experience and knowledge with her intuition. Open to the unpredictability of the creative process, she generally embarks on it without detailed plans, sketches or frameworks. She is guided by free flow, impulse and improvisation, allowing herself unlimited creative freedom. Faced with chaos, randomness and excess, she follows her inner, natural need for expression.

“Wild Orchids, 2024, acrylic and pastel on canvas, 120 x 100 cm

The artist is also inspired by nature, discovering and feeling it. Walks among plants, careful observation and deep experiencing of what is around, absorbing the colours and shapes of flora and fauna are bottomless sources of inspiration for organic forms, colourful nuances, the transience and changeability of cycles and seasons. The cyclical and repetitive nature provides solace and trust that everything has a beginning and an end.

An explosion of vivid and intense tones, expressively depicted through spontaneous brushstrokes, emanates from the artist’s paintings. The colour in Łapa-Maik’s paintings is like an energetic volcano of colours, reflecting the vibrancy of her personality. It is a magnetic force that attracts the viewer’s eye. The mesmerising, almost fluorescent pink, boldly juxtaposed with cobalt and turquoise, is like a colourful talisman, recharging human resources. Open compositions and dynamic lines with uneven contours, allow the colours to flow freely, creating images with a wide spectrum of interpretation.

“Graphis Recording of Forest Songs”, 2024, acrylic and pastel on canvas, 100 x 120 cm

“Celebration”, 2023, acrylic and pastel on canvas, 120 x 100 cm

Freedom in the creative process brings authenticity. The paintings absorb the viewer into the artist’s intimate world, becoming a field for her own individual feelings and reflections. Łapa-Maik often paints several paintings at the same time, moving between the canvases as if in an expressive, spontaneous dance, which the artist loves and also practices outside the studio. She is interested in the impulse coming out of the body and the flow of energy, leading towards the release of emotions. Movement frees up space for ideas and decisions.

For her, the process of creating paintings has a meditative dimension. She seeks tranquillity in a world full of turmoil. The natural need for expression becomes a form of healing for the soul, striving to discover its inner, primal truths. The artist experiences that the way to inner freedom is through attentiveness in everyday life. Presence. Silence allows the voice of one’s own heart to be heard and gives the courage to follow one’s deepest desires. The artist talks to her inner child, hugs it, accepts it and understands it. All this makes her happy and living in harmony with herself, accepting everyday life with its whole package of life challenges. Being open to change also brings the need to face what is painful. Stepping out of one’s comfort zone builds growth, and every breakthrough in life leads to a rearrangement of one’s life in order to adapt to the new reality in one’s own way. The resulting paintings become, in this context, a solace in an excessive and restless world.

“Treasure Island”, 2024, acrylic and pastel on canvas 100 x 120 cm

In her most recent works, the artist, enchanted by the world of mythological goddesses, draws on the history of female heroines, sorceresses, about whom she says: “In feminist terms, Medea before Euripides was not an infanticide, but a powerful sorceress and priestess (the goddess Hekate), or even a goddess, benevolent, related to Demeter, perhaps an aspect of her. She had the power to rejuvenate and regenerate, to restore fertility, she enchanted snakes, she knew the secrets of herbs, she combined the energies of the Sun and Moon. Next to her, other powerful goddesses and feminist reinterpretations of their myths and associated archetypes emerged to me: in the first instance, Hekate and Demeter precisely. I felt fascinated.”

Łapa-Maik’s painting is thus a story of transformation and search. Turning to re-told myths in which the goddesses regain their former power and independence, she seeks her own interpretation of them. It is a path full of twists, turns and adventures, and the paintings displayed at the exhibition are like selected frames from different stages of this fascinating journey.

Written by Izabela Rogala

Translated by Katarzyna Boch

Photo by Mariola Kędzior, Kamil Łapa, Piotr Maik