ANNA SZMAJDA

About

I am a Polish artist living and working in Brighton, South East of England.I studied traditional oil painting, life drawing and print techniques at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, and continued my practice whilst travelling, and since moving to the UK more than 10 years ago.Having spent much of my early artistic development working plein air, I’ve developed a lasting fascination with the natural world. Many of my works explore the meaning I find in the human-nature connection, from representational pieces to abstract works, and everything in between.I am also interested in the relationship between art and somatics (a practice centred on sensing and responding to the body’s internal signals). I discovered somatic work in my early twenties when seeking relief from chronic pain and continued my explorations through a variety of modalities, including dance improvisation and the Feldenkrais Method. These practices deepened my awareness of the felt sense within my body, and I became curious about how these inner sensations affect my visual perception, and vice versa - how looking at an image can impact my inner embodied landscape.For me, making a painting is a multisensory experience and a meditation on meaning, explored through the process of creative discovery.