Editors: Pola Dwurnik, Izabela Kaszynska
GIRL ON CANVAS is an artbook project by Pola Dwurnik about painting and its reception. It will show a new life of Dwurnik’s paintings, one completely uncontrolled by the artist’s life born in minds and hearts of over 30 various personalities, who wrote texts for the publication. The book will be both openly personal and bravely intimate. Subversive, rascally and girlish. A subtle riot.
Painting is not dead. It is the viewers who are lifeless or stunned. Though not all and that is precisely what this book is about. It is about how a girl, painted on a canvas, can communicate with us.
I have long noticed that visitors to my studio discover interesting and surprising aspects and narratives in the paintings; often far from what I had intended. Motivated by a desire to preserve such unusual interpretations, I decided in December 2011 to create a collection of stories based on a selection of my works. I commissioned the texts from friends, artistic collaborators, people that think about the world much as I do, or simply those with whom I share a passion and respect for the art of painting. I deliberately chose not to invite other painters for their professional and technical perspective merits a separate publication. The various authors of Girl on Canvas hold different values and subscribe to a variety of worldviews, which means this book does not represent any single milieu. Rather, it brings together people from various walks of life through my paintings. Girl on Canvas is also a review of the first dozen or so years of my painting practice. Here, using the words of others, I am looking at my work from a distance so that I can continue developing as an artist in a conscious and responsible way. P.D.
Concept and graphic design: Dagny & Daniel Szwed (moonmadness.eu)
Printed by Mos and Luczak Polygraphy General Partnership, Poznan