Ania Gola-Kumor Artist Statement

I make abstract Art and I am a Colorist. My paintings are near, psychological or intellectual abstractions.

Painting is a very personal and complicated process for me, related to my heart, brain, intuition, experiences and memory.  It reflects my state of mind.    I am painting out of the need to pushing paint around the canvas to give form to my emotions, I want to express issues I am exploring and verify something I never quite realize until I am satisfied with the results of my work. I don’t distinguish between art and life. Being is my practice.My painting process is about balance between spontaneity and control, intended and serendipitous.

In creating a good picture honesty is a very important, as I feel vulnerable and bold at the same time. For me a good picture combines spontaneity, control, and restraint.  I do not intend to create pretty pictures.  A painting is more valuable to me when it shows a struggle. 

I have a taste for defects or blemishes which, when skillfully accumulated, may acquire a special power.  Not based on direct observation, my paintings are based on memory of inner landscapes, the shapes I use to create are things I’ve seen yesterday and 20 years ago.

I am not interested anymore in depicting recognizable images.Abstraction doesn’t have to be simplification or distortion; it can be a remote response to things, places seen or experienced.  I do not believe in so-called moments of inspiration.  Painting is every-day-hard-work.  It is a burden, mission, joy, pleasure, torture, psychotherapy and   oxygen. Painting is opaque.  I like to work on several pictures at the same time. Unfinished help me to start new ones. It is very stressful meted because I would be surrounded by 7 – 12 unresolved paintings. Unpredictably, one almost finished helps me to finish 3 others and two days later they are all done. 

My Art changes and evolves, but seen together in consecutive order the transitions would make perfect sense.  My best paintings are those I did not like at first. It happens to me too often that I leave my studio with the feeling I’ve accomplished something and it turns out the next morning that the painting was too easy and not as great as I thought. On the other hand, those I didn’t like at first grow on me.

 “One is a reflection of meaning. So that the action must continually bear out realization of existence. Therefore the act is the primary sensation.  In painting it is the forming image; the compulsive action of becoming; the direct and indirect pressures brought to the climax in the acute act of forming. (By forming I don’t mean formalizing- or in the general sense the organizing of a “good painting”. These problems are easily reached and solved and in many cases have produced beautiful and even important works of art.)”

Cy Twombly