Ilona Noworacka

Oil on canvas

Ever since I became a mother, I began studying children's faces. With this challenge of painting a portrait I made my specialty. Reflecting the child's portrait is not just a superficial appearance. Each ordered portrait from under my brush contains the features of personality, characteristic gestures, and elements of the psyche of a portrayed child. The first toy, favorite bear, doll, shabby tiger immortalized in portrait is the first friend who knows all the sorrows and grievances of the child. I am an experienced painter, who always based painting creativity on human spirituality and emotions.

I find the mask to be an important element in my art. The mask helps to cover and to adopt in to a new role. Finally, a mask is a symbol of loneliness, otherness.

Sheets and pillow covers are an attempt to show the world of dreams to which we escape from reality.

Androgyne reflects unity of opposites: male and female, unity of bodies and souls, connected by love so strong that they become one, as a sacred marriage. In this work I question the impossibility of true man to man understanding, including physical otherness, loneliness, incompleteness, loss, lack of fulfillment, frustration. This set tells a story about an incomplete man, suspended between existence and nonexistence, it reveals a conflict between the spirit and the matter. I chose the name under which lies not only sexuality but metaphysical significance. Through creating I want to explore myself, and the models are only visual symbols of my thoughts.

Topics of my works are also based on interpersonal relationships, spiritual quests, sometimes religious and personal experiences.

My paintings and photos are sometimes depicted by the eyes of a child and the world that does exists between the reality and the esotericism.