My paintings are created from my unbridled desire to create, as well as a great curiosity of emerging forms during the entire creative process.
These are visions, dreams or glimpses of other states of consciousness that transmit in the form of artistic expression onto the surfaces of my canvases. My work involves certain type of materialisation of otherwise unidentified states.
An important part of my paintings is a line, painted or drawn, which in a sense is the metaphysical equivalent of the infinity line. This line changes colour, intensity, width and form, emerges from nowhere and always returns there, leaving gradually revealing an image-vision, some psychedelic impression.
Hence I like to think of my paintings as contemporary psychedelic impressionism.
This line is also identified with threads, coloured cord, yarn, string and all kinds of ribbons.
It often takes the form of elements of braids, crocheted lace, and embroidered fabrics that have been present in my life since I was a child, in the form of napkins hand-knit by my Grandma and patterned sweaters knitted by my Mom. I also remember my Grandma Teresa’s memories of her father, Franciszek Korejwo, who decorated weapons with inlay motifs and designed lace patterns.
Sometimes the line I paint resembles woven and embroidered patterns from old Indian fabrics that I have seen in previously unprecedented variety in shops in Udaipur, or colourful fabrics inspired by Ayahuasca with elements of fluorescent traditional patterns from street stalls in Cusco.
Sometimes saving the form or a balance in the painting, like the thread of Ariadne, is a beautifully formed line of a copper wire known to me since childhood, from visions of my Mother’s necklaces and rings, made by local artists in Wrocław. Their inspirations were drawn from Byzantium, ancient Egyptian or Greek jewellery designs, which the original pieces I later had the opportunity to see during frequent walks around the Met (Metropolitan Museum of Art) while living in New York City.
Also, a visit to the Gold Museum in Bogota gave me an incredible insight into the jewellery designs of pre-Columbian cultures, some of the motifs seemed surprisingly familiar to me.
Ultimately, I feel that the most important influence on my work is nature, my deep and constant observation and study of it.
From the blazing sunsets over Africa, carefully observed from the terrace of my home in Marbella where I lived for 15 years, through the quiet observation of the Alpine peaks while ascending on ski lifts, or the fabulously changing landscape during the Inca Trail in Peru on the way to Machu Picchu, which I had the pleasure of contemplating from the perspective of horseback, to the wonders of spring-blooming trees in my beloved Poland, I repeat what so many others have said,
that nature is a source of all beauty, knowledge and endless inspiration.
I found the immensity of the Canadian forests as fascinating, wild and untamed as the Amazon jungle, and just as majestically breathtaking. Their micro and macro worlds arrange and loop in the same patterns as the lines of the cloud-covered sky, the wind-swept dunes on the beach or the rippled grid of waves on the water, glistening in the sun or moonlight. Through my body, I actually experienced that all this is arranged according to some cosmic harmony, Divine beauty, described according to mathematical formulas and forms, including the Fibonacci sequence. Also, it can be felt while listening to harmonious sounds or instrumental music.
I feel the truth in nature, the essence of existence.
Becoming aware of this order of things brought me enormous relief, helped me out of the chaos of civilisation, relieved the pain of existence, and above all, restored my faith in love, goodness, trust and devotion to God.
These days, when I’m painting, I have the impression that the lines I paint are intertwining into a metaphorical fishing net that is intended to fish out of the abyss of non-existence, some meaning, perhaps a message. Sometimes this message is unclear but at times it brings a long awaited answer.
It happens that these patterns take the form of signs, letters of probably ancient but unknown to me writings, elements of ethnic decorations, thus activating the entire language of visual anthropology, subconsciously familiar to all of us, as if it was encoded somewhere deep in our human DNA.
These signs, letters, patterns and decorations seem to be some kind of a visual anthropological alphabet through which I discover otherwise unseen landscapes and beings that are out of this world. Perhaps, they are from the world of myths or fairy tales, although I sense that they might be from somewhere beyond there.
Now I have returned to the place of my birth, to Zgorzelec, where I want to continue my beloved work.
Where I want to paint, create and constantly satisfy my unbridled curiosity of the world and all issues related to the sphere of the phenomenon of existence.
Magdalena Milan