4 minute read
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.
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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,
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.
Lapuszek’s PhD programme included several personal exhibitions. The first took place in February 2009, at the Royal Cape Yacht Club (Cape Town). Then, further exhibitions included, on the ‘Nashachata’ sailing boat in the Indian Ocean, on the Crozet Islands, on Amsterdam Island (U wrót Amsterdamu), and on Kupang Isand in Indonesia, in order to show a different culture to the local people. Lapuszek’s PhD project was named ‘The Voyage Diary – pursuing every colour of the world.’
How did this Sailing Trip influence her PhD?
Lapuszek is also a professional Offshore Captain and embarked on a one and a half year sailing trip across three oceans (Atlantic, Indian and Pacific Oceans) in 2009. She completed a painting, drawing or poem, every day. These art expressions were created as visual notes, witnessing the days spent in harsh living conditions, in a small community, and are witnesses to her everyday aesthetic and emotional experience, which was so different from the regular life on land or in a city. She used dry pastels, watercolours, crayons, pencils, pens and natural materials, such as, coffee, tea, dust and ash! Various liquids were also used, including, sweet or salt water, glue and cleaning lotion, in order to obtain unexpected effects.
“The surroundings were examined in the artistic process, which was very important for my project. By the act of creation, I showed the artistic and emotional conditions which I experienced at this very moment of my life on the sailing boat. I asked questions and tried to find solutions to my problems. What is the influence of the sunlight, the weather conditions and my perception of my surroundings in my creation? Are there any differences between the works of art which were created near the cold, North Greenland, or in the hot land of South Australia? If you see my art project, you will know the answer. The project’s nature forms a colourful diary, which was made on a regular basis. Each page is a consecutive day spent underway,”
Lapuszek stated.
The artworks were used to form a much larger project. She emphasised that a piece of art has to reflect the artist’s expressionist vision. Lapuszek went on to describe them in more detail.
“They are not realistic, reporter’s paintings. They are organic abstracts that do not show the sea in a realistic way, but connote the image of the sea, sky and surrounding nature.” In 2011, Lapuszek won 1st prize for the Best Sailing Trip in the Art PhD programme in Kraków, and used the paintings during her involvement as Stage Designer for Kraków’s 750th Anniversary Festival. Soon, an exhibition of the paintings, coupled with photos of the artist experience, will be taking place at Chakra Fine Art Gallery in Paphos. A selection of her work for sale is already on show there.