introblurb
Martyna Zoltaszek is a Polish artist based in the UK, with MFA from the Academy of Fine Arts in wroclaw, Poland. She further developed her practice during a scholarship residency at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. She works from Jamaica Street Studios in Bristol. Martyna has exhibited in group and solo shows internationally and her artworks feature in collections across continents. She has collaborated with Nina Ricci, Djeco Paris, BBC & Saatchi Online.
Her works are a portal into abundant, colourful spaces assembled from memories and imagined vistas. She heavily draws on her early life experience.
‘I grew up in a brutalist architecture tower block, surrounded by this drab reality of an eastern block city. The winters were long and grey, cracked concrete swallowing the city whole. There just wasn’t much colour around. And my young brain craved to devour it. Concurrently, my family home was full of collected items, found treasures, trinkets, precariously stacked on top of one another.’
Consequently, the paintings explore man’s relationship to his environment and treasured objects, his creating of inner and outer extension of themselves & finding refuge in imagined and self-curated spaces. The viewer is confronted with worlds breaming with colour, exploring the tension between lack and abundance. Rich plethora of colour and pattern are carefully placed, so that the works evoke feelings of raw joy or contemplation.
