*the talk has been transcribed & edited for brevity & clarity
**Ewelina Bochenska has expanded on some thoughts post-talk, the additions are noted in italics
Tessa Granowski (Nature of Things):
Thank you everyone for coming out in the rain! I'm Tessa Granowski, and this is Ewelina Bochenska, the artist here at Jardín. Thank you, Isabel, for having us and for asking me to start curating shows. This is a very fun way to kick it off.
Ewelina and I just got back from the Menil and Rothko Chapel before this, and I thought it would be a fun way to start the talk by asking her to talk about some of the works there that she connected to, as I’m sure most of you in the room have something there that you care about. Ewelina, was there anything that like stood out to you at the Menil or the Rothko Chapel that you want to talk about? Something that you found interesting?
Ewelina Bochenska:
Thank you, Tessa and Isabel for having me. Thank you everyone for being here.
I actually loved the Jackson Pollock painting ‘The Magic Mirror’ from 1941, a little painting that is kind of in a beige, grayish tone. It's like very tactile. I don't know if you remember that painting. That was probably my favorite. And Mark Rothko ‘Astral Image’ from 1946, that was next to it.
Image courtesy of the Menil
Image courtesy of the Menil
TG:
What did you like about them?
EB:
Jackson Pollock painting it's very physical, very raw, and free. I just love that they are both very ambiguous, hovering between being recognizable and being abstract, both very mysterious paintings. And I also their titles are just so interesting.
TG:
I feel like your work also has a tactility and a rawness to it, in the way that you layer the paint and build up a surface. All of this work that's in this show… has it come from different bodies of work, or will you talk a little bit about this group of paintings as a whole?
EB:
I think that the work in this show comes from like at least three or four different periods of time. Event Horizon is probably one of the oldest pieces that incorporates pieces of leather glued, or woven into the surface, and it took me at least two years to make the painting arrive to where it's at currently. The newest painting is Wind Spirits over there in the corner, and it doesn't have any added material elements. It is just oil on canvas.
I painted Crossing the Desert when I lived in Tucson, Arizona, about three years ago. During that time, I made a trip back to Poland, where I'm from, to visit my mom. It was around the time when my dad died, and I was just going through a lot of stuff that belonged to the family, and I came across this really beautiful shirt that my grandmother owned, and since I was the one to decide what to do with all the stuff, I ended up incorporating it into the painting. So, the surface of the painting has my grandmother's shirt incorporated into the paint.
TG:
Wow! And what about the Event Horizon? The texture of that one is really interesting.
EW:
Yes, the pieces of leather. I see them as found objects. Even with my grandmother's shirt, I think of it as an object. I wanted to construct a structure for the painting with the rays coming out of the moon. It's a type of moon/planet/flower that radiates across the surface of the painting, so it's like a type of a skeleton in the body of the painting. If you think of the color as, let's say, the skin, and then the leather as the bones of the painting... There’s a lot of fleshy elements. There’s a lot of me thinking of the of the relationship between the human body and the painting.
EW:
Since I was a child, I've always lived a very nomadic type of life. It wasn't really by choice. It was more the circumstance that I was brought up in. And in terms of folk art, I just grew up around a lot of textile pieces—carpets, fabrics. My aunt, who raised me, had a lot of carpets hanging as paintings on her walls. I have the memory of waking up as a kid, staring at the at the wall, at the surface of the of the carpet, and getting lost into the tapestry of the of the colors and different types of threads, the way they're like interwoven, the way they create space.
I seem to be picking up on the energy of every place that I go to, and the energy of the place gets transmuted through my being and into the painting. It happens on an unconscious level, but it happens very organically, and I don't necessarily have to think hard about it. It just flows like water.
TG:
Is there some sort of like settling or spiritual practice that you have before you go into studio mode and start working on a painting? Is there a meditation that you do, or is the act of painting itself the process of an active meditation?
EW:
What a great question! No, not really. However, when I lived in Reno, Nevada, I got to meet a couple people from the Hungry Valley Reservation, the Northen Paiutes-Western Shoshone tribe and became really good friends with them, especially my friend Brian Melendez, who is Northen/Southern Paiute-Western Shoshone. I keep going back every summer to spend some time with them. I think being around Brian and his family has helped me create a life where almost every day is a prayer or a meditation. He has taught me a lot, made me aware of my connection to the land and the world. Everything we do or say becomes like a ritual, so there's a really big focus for me on just being very conscious and very aware of the material world.
TG:
Does ritual imply that you're repeating some of the same practices, or is it more of a presence and response to the environment?
EW:
It's more of an awareness. But a ritual can be having a cup of tea every day. Brushing your teeth can also be a ritual. So, in a sense, yes, I mean anything that gets repeated. But when you do it with a certain awareness or gratitude… like drinking a cup of water. If you connect to the spirit of water and express your gratitude for the water being in your cup, in that sense, it becomes like a ritual.
TG:
Luckily Ewelina loves humidity. This is her first time in Houston. She loves the Live Oak trees, which are very alive…
I feel like there are certain symbols that are recurring in your works—the moon or landscapes that don't necessarily feel like you're going out into nature and painting from life. It feels more in the vein of symbolism. Was there a specific place though that some of the imagery comes from? Is there a true landscape that you have in mind that you've actually traveled to, or is this kind of more of a landscape of your spirit?
EW:
Yes and no. Let's see. This one, *pointing to Luna Llena* since I've spent a lot of summers in the Hungry Valley Reservation, is inspired by the desert in northern Reno and the moonscape. And also, by my friends from the Hungry Valley Reservation, and the way that they pray to the sun, to the moon, to the sky, to the stars and to the land. I think I'm greatly inspired by the way they communicate with their environment, and so I internalize that, and it comes through the work.
Since I’ve spent a lot of time in the desert, there's a lot of desert energy.
TG:
Yeah. Now living in Los Angeles… LA can even feel like a desert, but it's also by the ocean. Is there some sort of new energy there that you're connecting to there?
EW:
Definitely the energy of water. I think that the energy of the ocean has been coming up more and more. Some of my favorite painters are Forrest Bess and Albert Pinkham Ryder. I realized when we were talking last night, that they are both inspired by the sea and by the ocean. Forest Bess was a fisherman and writer. I think he spent a lot of time at the sea.
TG:
I recently learned that Forrest Bess would paint with his eyes closed to learn how to convey certain shapes without sight, but with touch. We also were talking today with Dan about his time of sailing to Brazil and kind of this rhythm that takes place when you're out on the water, something that feels like you're returning to the womb. There is a very bodily rhythm to waves that is maybe something we forget if we're not close to the ocean.
EW:
And there is this type of movement that happens when I paint… the motion of painting is like the ebbs and flows of the water.
Back to Forrest Bess, some of his paintings were inspired by his dreams, and dreams have been have become more important to me more recently. So, I don't have to be inspired by my environment. Things are becoming more internal, even though I still make trips to the desert for a couple weeks of the year. I just get into a hermit mode and go more inwards with all of the imagery that has been built up over my whole life.
TG:
Dreams are fraught with symbolism.
EW:
Yeah, painting for me is also a little bit like lucid dreaming, where the way I create the imagery is through dreaming them into existence, as if I was in a dream. When things are not necessarily logical, it's more about the feeling than the understanding when I'm making it.
TG:
Oh, I like that. Okay, I wanted to leave time for other people to ask questions. Isabel?
Isabel Wilson:
I see there are a lot of layers in there. Like, are you just adding to it and subtracting? I was curious your material process.
EW:
Kind of everything all at once. I was just talking to Bill Willis, right before we started, and we had this really interesting conversation about how the way a painting gets created is very paradoxical, where things can happen really fast and really slow at the same time. There are a lot of layers that get built up, but then when the final image comes together, it can happen in a nanosecond, like really fast.
IW:
Speaking more to your process of developing imagery, are these real flowers that are like a specific species that you're like thinking of and remembering, or is it just sort of your brain creating a flower without like deciding on what it is, or like how is that developed and do you ever paint from like an image or is it just strictly your memory?
EB:
They're more imagined. These are flowers that don't really exist, but they come from my dream space. There’s this one painting where the flowers look like planets, but they are flowers like the moon, so it's like a type of moonflower. I don't say surreal flowers, but flowers that you could find on a planet in a different galaxy. This flower, this specific flower *pointing to a flower in Luna Llena*, looks like a flower that grows in the Amazon. It's called Bobinsana. It is a shrub that grows next to the river. It has star-like flowers that carry us to the celestial realms. Apparently it has really deep roots which help the tree to ground itself, so as not to be taken by the current of the water.
It's super healing for your heart, actually, if you have any heart trauma, it's immensely powerful, it opens your heart. You can drink it as a tincture—the flower essence. And, yeah, she is also called a weaver of dreams, helping us to receive powerful messages and teachings through the dream space. Is it not funny how everything is so interconnected?
Tyler Swanner:
I have a question. You mentioned lucid dreaming and being sensitive to energies and ritual. I'm curious if there are any like metaphysics that make their way into your paintings or process, or is there an additional spiritual layer to your life or to your work that's in the unseen, that you feel like you’re channeling?
EW:
People have always told me that my painting is spiritual, or that I'm spiritual, or the way I think is spiritual. Even though to me it's just how I see the world. I don't necessarily see myself as spiritual, but I understand how other people would consider me and my work spiritual. So yeah, I would say it's deep metaphysical source that I can draw the paintings from.
Jenn Swanner:
What type of emotion, or energy, if you had to name how you feel when you are channeling or working in flow... what are you feeling?
EW:
Honestly, it might sound maybe a little disappointing, but when I paint, it's very much like doing the dishes. It's just second nature and not thinking about it. It's like making yourself a sandwich, you know, or cleaning your apartment. It's like not like I’m lighting a candle or incense. I love candles. And I love incense, but not so much when I paint.
It’s always great to be at some type of like peaceful state of mind, but normally that's never the case. Usually, when I end up sitting down and painting, there's a lot of turmoil and chaos going on in my life. I think painting does help me come back to myself, so in that sense it helps me to reconnect with myself. It’s more like a purification process, and it’s why it's so hard— because of the ancestral trauma that I'm still processing. The older I get, the more aware of it I become, and there are more layers that I have to dig through to arrive at a sense peace and tranquility.
Again, going back to the paradox. There's almost a celestial-like realm that you can access, but you have to enter through the gates and how? I guess I would say you have to be willing to be at peace with the polarity of this universe. Sometimes, it's like the more I'm able to unharness the energy of the peace, I have to also become aware of the opposite. You know, so you kind of have to balance the two together when you paint.
TG:
Ewelina, is there anything more that you'd like to share about your work or it being in this space that's not a conventional kind of art space?
EW:
Well, I love color so much, and this place has so many beautiful shades of all kinds of pinks and reds and oranges and blues and purples. I'm totally obsessed with the way everything just fits together. Also, when I was talking with you Tessa last night, I realized that to me, painting is a lot about transference of consciousness. The reason why I have those favorite painters is because they were able to somehow transfer their feeling or who they were or what they have experienced onto the surface of the painting more than anybody else, and they are able to capture the mystery of life.
IW:
I have to say, when I’m working here for hours and hours, and there’s nice art on the wall, it does affect me emotionally. I think the show has been so nice to work within.