Dimensions: 120 x 70 cm
Signed in composition: 'Kat Garstka'
signed, dated and described on the reverse: 'Kat Garstka 2023 | "Trial by Fire"'.
Biography
Artist of dual Czech-Polish citizenship, painter and motiondesigner who also creates in digital space and VR (virtual reality). Her life and work are stretched between Warsaw and Ostrava, and this geographical duality and borderline also become the subject and context of her art.
She began her artistic education in Ostrava, Czech Republic, where she graduated from a secondary art school in 1996. In 2004 she defended her master's degree in painting at the University of Zielona Gora in the studio of Prof. Ryszard Wozniak, co-founder of the famous Gruppa art formation. In 1997-2002 she studied at the painting department of the European Academy of Arts in Warsaw.
Her works have been shown at Galerie Mlejn in Ostrava, Czech Republic (2005), at the Warsaw exhibitions "Surreal" (2011) and "Unlimited Art Space" (2012) or "Others" (2013), and at the Sopot exhibition "Young Art", presenting works by 71 of the most interesting young Polish artists.
Her style combines traditional painting with the latest animation techniques. She often uses the medieval technique of painting with lasers, but with contemporary pigments. She draws on the traditions of classical portrait and landscape painting, but deepens them with a psychological hypothesis, with the result that the portrait actually becomes a manifestation of the dreams, dreams and fantasies of the painted figures. The protagonists of her paintings are mostly women undergoing painterly psychoanalysis, who together create a compelling herstory narrative. The abstract structure and surreal landscape meld with the figure, creating non-obvious clues to her interpretation. All to get to the essence of the personality.
