There are moments when you are simply left speechless with wonder. That happened to me over 30 years ago, when I first heard about the Italian artist Giorgio Morandi and saw his work in an art book.

And last year, in 2025, I had the great pleasure and good fortune to see some of his works in person, at an exhibition at the Zachęta National Gallery of Art in Warsaw. A wonderful painting culture, consistency, harmony, and combinations of colours and forms – these are the things I continue to admire in Giorgio Morandi's art. I would love to visit his studio – apartment in Bologna one day.

I experienced a similar sense of awe at the huge monographic exhibition of Pieter Bruegel at the Kunsthistorisches Museum (KHM) in Vienna in 2018, an exhibition completely different in character. It was extraordinary not only to see almost all of Bruegel's works in one place, but also to view them on screens in enormous magnification. Yes, rightly so, this exhibition was regarded as a historic and truly exceptional cultural event.

First came the balconies. And then… gradually, my fascination with Kyiv’s architecture shifted from balconies to the facades of its buildings and to passages and gates. The incredibly beautiful facades of Kyiv’s townhouses, with their almost Baroque ornamentation, cornices and details. The gates of the old townhouses seemed to invite you in, but it was the passage itself that intrigued me most. It led into a courtyard, and there, another passage could be seen in the next building.

Oh, what a subject!
To capture the light caressing the gate from within, and the mystery of what was hidden beyond it. How lucky I was that this was still a time without barriers and security fences in the city (and with fewer cars).

So Kyiv was once again the first. Then other cities gradually revealed to me the beauty of their gates and hidden corners. I painted gates in Vilnius, Lublin, Kraków, Katowice and Chrzanów, and later the architecture of the German cities of Otterndorf and Stade, as well as Lyon in France.

As I painted them, passages and gates also took on new meanings and metaphors; they became a passage between what is known and visible and what is hidden, between light and shadow, good and evil.

Now, after a break, I am returning to painting and rubbing my hands with delight, because there are so many beautiful places waiting to be painted! Soon I will tell you which extraordinary city became my first great inspiration after all these years.

This is what I wrote about the Balconies of Kyiv in March 2000:

“A person who is emotionally connected to a particular place carries its image within them, and certain small ‘snapshots’ in the subconscious create a unique and personal portrait of the city. This is how it was for me with Kyiv. Compared with my hometown of Kraków, which is covered with the patina of time and immersed in sepia, muted browns and greys, Kyiv surprised me with the vivid colours of house walls, ornaments, and the colourful chequerboard of balconies built into new buildings, or with the solitude of some balconies against the vast walls of older buildings. The façades of the buildings here caught my attention with their ‘otherness’, even their exoticism. (…)

Several years passed before these impressions developed into a concrete idea of giving them a painterly form.
The series of paintings “Balconies of Kyiv” is a presentation of my impressions, arising from my astonishment and fascination with the aesthetics of selected architectural elements of the monumental city of Kyiv. Their beauty moves me, although at times it results from objective ugliness, decay, repainting, scratches, or even absurd combinations of forms (from an architect’s point of view). Józef Czapski wrote about a similar feeling:
“It is the same solitary, unexpected wonder, the feeling that we alone see a miracle of unique beauty, which in the eyes of others is either completely unnoticed or – worse still – ridiculous.”

I prefer white to black. The sun to the moon. I prefer dogs to cats. Silence is better than noise. I find Baroque more beautiful than the Renaissance. Summer over winter. And tall, comfortable cars over low, uncomfortably flat ones. On the other hand, I prefer low heels to high ones. Ever since it became possible (henna became available in shops in the 1980s), I started dyeing my hair red.

As a child, I didn’t like the color pink or blue. When it came to clothes, of course, you couldn’t be picky – you had to wear what you had. My grandmothers sewed dresses and knitted, and later – probably from the age of 13 – I started sewing for myself, knitting various things, making patchwork skirts, sweaters, bags, and dyeing fabrics. My parents gave us the freedom to be creative. For example, my younger sister and I were allowed to paint on the walls of the room we shared – once it was a dragon, and later a painted brick wall. It was great. However, this didn’t mean “do whatever you want” – there were boundaries, and we knew what each of us was allowed to do and when.