Irena Kurowska

‘I was born in Edinburgh and now live in Yorkshire. After gaining a degree in fine art I chose to do a postgraduate course in art therapy and a further postgraduate course in psychotherapy. I worked for many years as an art psychotherapist with the NHS and in private practice. Since retiring I have been able to devote more time to my own painting. I work in oils acrylic and watercolour.

I explore my world through mark making and texture focusing on atmosphere and mood. I work in various media and honour the qualities of each one.

I like to work with the physical and emotional aspects of texture and surface, building up history in a complexity of surface by in the interaction of elements of texture and colour.

Flowers with their colour, fragility and harmony speak to us all on so many different levels. I love the beauty of flowers and the innate abstraction of nature’s patterns. I am delighted by both their tranquillity and playfulness.

Sometimes my paintings focus on the sense of stillness and reflection in nature with a subtle soft aesthetic and sometimes I am attracted to their ornamental colourful blowsy exuberance which calls for more saturated and intense colour.

I inhabit a space between abstraction and reality.’