FEATURED Artist
THE VOYAGE DIARY ‘A Sailing Trip across 3 Oceans’ Joanna Urszula Lapuszek Joanna Urszula Lapuszek is an international award-winning artist, with a rich educational background in Fine Art. Her journey into the art world began in 1993 and, although she is originally from Poland, she has lived in Cyprus since 2010. In 2000, Lapuszek won a Socrates/Erasmus scholarship to attend the Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki, Finland. Later, she attended the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków and graduated with a Master’s Degree in Fine Arts in 2003. She was awarded her Diploma, with Distinction, in Painting and Drawing. Lapuszek then embarked on a three-year PhD programme across three oceans, where she sailed as a professional Offshore Captain for one and a half years. In 2013, she received an honorary doctoral degree in Fine Arts from the same academy, and has since been involved in countless international exhibitions and projects.
Lapuszek has been a member of the Association of Polish Artists and Designers since 2001. The Association was founded in 1911, in Kraków, during the Partitions of Poland, and now represents more than 8,500 learned artists. She held the position ‘Master of the Artists Club’ within the Association of Polish Artists and Designers from 2003 to 2006. During this time, she also curated numerous exhibitions for the Association. Lapuszek is an open-minded and free-spirited character, who has a very carefree attitude towards her style of painting. She is fully aware that it is not to everyone’s taste, but for those who can appreciate it, it is worth doing. She has worked on art commissions for various high end professionals and venues, including the US Embassy in New Zealand, and,
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later, a Private Collection in Chicago. Lapuszek has her work featured in various art collections worldwide, including Cyprus, Holland, Portugal, Sweden and UK. Lapuszek became a holder of the Grazella Foundation scholarship in 2003, won 1st prize in the Small Size Painting Exhibition at Gallery ZPAP Sukiennice in Kraków, in 2004, and 1st prize at the 10th Zillisheim Painting Exhibition, in France, 2005. Lapuszek also worked as the coordinator of ‘Konfrontationen - Konfrontacje Berlin-Kraków’, an international festival that took place in 2005, designed to bring young creative communities of Berlin and Kraków closer to the public, in order to present their achievements to a wide audience.