Painting in Poland with Ewa Gargulinska

So here’s the story:

When I left the corporate world of Deloitte, I was craving something creative and decided to apply for an Art Foundation. And not just at any College, either. I set my sights on Central Saint Martins, one of the most competitive but also most creative colleges in London. I decided to contact a teacher who I had taken a short course with at CSM one Summer – a Polish artist called Ewa Gargulinska. Her course was called Expressive Painting and involved no objects or still lives – only our imaginations. There’s something very therapeutic about painting from the psyche.

Art by Ewa Gargulinska

Ewa decided to help me prepare a portfolio for my application, which turned out to be a much more massive undertaking than I had anticipated, including 3D sculptures of Physics (drawing on my undergraduate degree) and memories of the faceless suits that marched by during my morning commute.

Twigs and wires entwine in an energy explosion to represent The Casimir Effect.

Unfortunately, my application wasn’t successful but I felt like I was already on a Foundation with Ewa, so we continued to work together until I found myself painting with her in the Polish countryside.

I produced my favourite piece of work at the start of the trip, perhaps because I really noticed the difference since many lessons in Ewa’s Richmond studio (the route to which is sketched below).

My ‘commute’ to Ewa’s studio through Richmond Green.

Working with Ewa involves a deep exploration of imagination and we start by painting a background, usually a greyish colour (sometimes with a suggestion of something else) and once that is dry we see what forms emerge. These figures came through in my first piece:

What do you see?

I’ll leave their meaning to your imagination! Ewa taught us (as we critiqued each other’s work) that the artist should remain quiet so as not to influence the interpretation of others. The trip also included authentic Polish cuisine and a walk through the mountains in Zakopane, which ended here:

Ewa is running her usual Expressive Painting course at Central Saint Martins in December 2017 and as I’m sure you can guess from this post, I would really recommend it!

Deepika Mehta

Deepika Mehta‘s story tells of the triumph over trauma. She suffered a serious rock climbing accident in her early twenties that left her immobile for two years. During this time she became intrigued by the power of positive thinking, which eventually led her to the healing practice of yoga.

She supplements this with self-expressive dance and explains how the two work together to keep her body balanced in the inspirational interview below:

Inspiration

I recently ordered a beautiful new bookcase from Habitat (since my pile of magazines, books and journals was beginning to form a very colourful new carpet) and was finally able to put all my cookbooks in one place. Seeing them altogether gave me the urge to share what inspired me about each of the authors:

Deliciously Ella

Who better to start with than the original pioneer of the health-food movement, Deliciously Ella. She started her blog as a way of documenting an experiment to see if changing her eating habits could alleviate the symptoms of a rare illness she had developed called Postural Tachycardia Syndrome, which included chronic pain and fatigue. She started simply with a regime of porridge, avocado toast and brown rice pasta with veggie sauce and began to notice a difference. This inspired her to create her own healthy recipes, including her infamous sweet potato brownies that shocked her followers with their purely wholesome ingredients – no butter, eggs, sugar or flour but instead sweet potatoes, dates and an incredible ingredient called cacao, which seemed to taste just like chocolate but was apparently a superfood!

Fast forward four years and Ella is about to release her fourth book whilst running two successful and delicious delis, not to mention a line of energy balls (that you can even make yourself!)

Niomi Smart is probably most well known for her vlogs, although she has recently released a healthy cookbook called Eat Smart that features a beautiful raspberry + lemon ripple ‘cheese’cake (the cheese is made from cashews!)

The Hemsley sisters were two of the first health-conscious foodies I stumbled across and I actually like their non-vegan style that caters for everyone. For example, their BB brownies include eggs but otherwise ingredients full of health benefits (including black beans – what else could BB stand for?) showing that veganism is not necessarily the answer. Their bright green avocado lime cheesecake is also worth a try but when it comes to using avocados for the sweet stuff, their healthy chocolate mousse is my all-time favourite as its so simple and delicious!

Madeleine Shaw is so bright and bubbly, and the gluten-free brownies from her latest cookbook are divine.

My New Roots is a beautiful blog by Sarah Britton.

After watching the patisserie version of the Bake Off (Creme de la Creme), I was determined to try my hand at the notoriously more difficult department of desserts. It’s actually so difficult with quite complicated recipes that I still haven’t tried one from Patisserie Maison.. #WatchThisSpace

I first heard about Henrietta Inman in Vegan Living (a great magazine, even for non-vegans!) and was particularly impressed by her professional training as a pastry chef, as for some reason this is rare for the majority of health-conscious cooks. Seeing so many of my favourite healthy ingredients put together with such technicality gave me so much joy and I can’t wait to try a recipe from there (perhaps the coconut rose cake with whipped vanilla coconut cream!)

The journey to your dreams always starts from within