Grażyna Smalej (b. 1976), Greetings from Hel; 2022

Oil, canvas; 40 x 30 cm
Signed on the back: GRAŻYNA SMALEJ/ ,,Greetings from HELU"/ 2022/ OLEJ NA FLATNIE/ 40 x 30 cm/ GSmalej

Polish painter and graphic artist, graduate of the Faculty of Painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Cracow, she received her diploma in 2001. Between 1998 and 2001 she received a scholarship from Hans Bernhardt (Germany). In 2001 she received the Grand Prix of the Minister of Culture
in the Marian Michalik Competition for Young Painters in Częstochowa. She is a multiple finalist in the Bielska Jesien Biennale of Polish Painting. She has had many solo exhibitions and participated in many group exhibitions at home and abroad, including the Saatchi Gallery in London (Continental Shift, 2014), Lambertville in the United States (May Day, 2015). Her works can be found in private collections
and institutions around the world - in Europe, the United States, Australia, China, Japan and many other countries. Since 2018, she has been a member of the Sisters of the Rivers collective organizing, among other things, happenings for the protection of rivers in Poland. Since 2021, she has been living and working in Sopot.

In painting, the artist moves freely between various conventions -.
depending on the subject she happens to be dealing with and exploring. She is a devotee of lightness in means of expression at the same time attached to the two-dimensional traditional canvas, which she sees as a field of infinite possibilities. She attaches great importance to color being for her the ideal medium for expressing emotions.

"Greetings from Hel" is a painting from a series about the Baltic Sea, which the painter is fond of, especially since she moved to the sea. It is a love pure and simplest, sensitive to every shade of the landscape uniquely changeable and mobile in the constant sky-water relationship.