Ewa Kujawska was born and raised in Wrocław (Poland), where she earned a master's degree in painting, printmaking and sculpture from the Academy of Fine Arts. In 1986 Ewa Kujawska came to Canada, where she has lived and worked ever since, using mainly oil and acrylic paints and her own mixing techniques.
As in the works of Santiago Cardenas, Ewa Kujawska's painting evokes an alliance of imagination and reason. Her works achieve this in a playful abstraction.
At first glance, the works of Ewa Kujawska are characterized by the enormous density of the painting ground and the resulting irrepressible energy. In almost all of the works, the energy is focused on a superficially integrated, mostly centrally arranged object: be it a small found coin, a tiny stone, a shiny steel ball or a piece of wood accidentally washed up by the river. Items that lose their status as objects to become part of the plastic vocabulary of art.
These are chance encounters with "eyewitnesses" who are symbols and tell stories. Through art, they are freed from objectivity and gain an unprecedented stage and public. Captured and preserved moments of life. Valuable moments that can be very modest, short and quite ordinary and therefore usually pass us by unnoticed. Ewa Kujawska has the intuition, the spontaneity and the awareness for the small emotional moment, which she gives a larger, loving space.
In this way, coincidence and memory find their place on the strictly conceptual and minimal, often luminous canvas. Radiant orange, deep dark blue or often monochrome white areas are the preferred color spectrum for emotional presentations.
Ewa Kujawska finds imaginative themes and materials for her media mix works in these little encounters. Works are created with beautiful textures, exciting shapes, surprising colours, random materials and a lot of the past that has been preserved. She invites the viewer on an individual journey of discovery. Her works demand time in exchange for experiencing a symbiosis of imagination and reason.
Ewa has a long history of exhibiting and participating in various cultural and artistic events. Her works have been exhibited by galleries, private collectors and corporations in Canada, France, Germany, the USA, Morocco, Greece and Poland. She has received numerous awards and honors in Canada and abroad. She was represented by the Societé de Développement en Art Contemporain (Sodarco) in Montreal after winning the Special Merit Award at the "Grand Prix International de Montréal" (1992) and 1st prize at the "Reflet d'art d'ici" competition d'ailleurs" of Sodarco) in 1993.
Exhibitions (selection)
2019 A Art Gallery, Germany 2018 ASP Gallery@ASP Studios, Ottawa -“It Happens” 2017 Project of the Center of Polish Culture - “Polish Art in the Eyes of the World”, Jolicoeur, Montreal 2016 ASP Gallery@ASP Studios, Ottawa - “Here and Now – Restore and Restrain ” 2015 ASP Gallery@ASP Studios, Ottawa - “Ottawa Culture Days – Open House ” 2015 EFE gallery d'art virtual - permanent group show - 2015 ASP Gallery@ASP Studios, Ottawa - “Here and Now – Micro and Macro” - paintings and photographs 2015 EFE Virtual Art Gallery -“D'espaces et de regards” -group show - 2014-15 Galeria OPUS, Wroclaw , Poland – permanent exhibition - group show - 2014 ASP Gallery@ASP Studios, Ottawa - “Traces of Presence – Micro and Macro” 2013 ASP Gallery@ASP Studios, Ottawa -“Ottawa Culture Days -Open House ” 2013 Shenkman Arts Centre, Ottawa - “Phillipines Forward – Artists Making Difference 2013 ASP Gallery@ASP Studios, Ottawa - “Micro and Macro Cosmos ” 2012 ASP Gallery@ASP Studios, Ottawa - “Energy of Summers”, photographs and paintings 2012 ASP Gallery@ASP Studios Open House, Ottawa 2011 ASP Gallery@ASP Studios Open House, Ottawa 2011 Arts & Architecture, Ottawa , -“Travelling Shadows”, photographs and paintings 2011 Radisson Blue, Wroclaw , Poland- “Canadian Culture in Poland ” 2011 ASP Gallery @ ASP Studios, Ottawa 2010 Ottawa Photography Festival X, ZOOM Exposure, Ottawa 2010 Stafford Studios Open House, Ottawa
1997-09 Calligrammes Gallery, Ottawa – gallery artists shows 2009 Stafford Studios Open House, Ottawa 2009 La Sirene, Montreal