Exhibition of paintings and photographs “Two Sisters”

The exhibition Two Sisters, prepared by Limited Edition Gallery at Rozbrat 44A in Warsaw, will present the work of two sisters, practicing various fields of art, who have lived outside Poland for years, and whose sensitivity and aesthetics were shaped by the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts.

Manka Dowling - painting

...My ambition is if someone now or in two hundred years looking at my painting smiles, my artistic aspirations will be fulfilled....
Manka Dowling

Manka Dowling - as she describes herself, on her artistic path, has been very lucky. It began at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts in the 1970s, where she studied painting in the studio of Jan Cybis. The studio of Cybis, who was assisted by Rajmund Ziemski, also a world-class painter, was one of the most interesting painting studios at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts. In 1967, Manka Dowling defended her diploma in painting - receiving an honorable mention. She had already taken on various jobs during her studies. At the time, she supported herself by designing and producing artistic fabrics for the "Wzór" cooperative. In the period 1967-1970, she continued to work with "Wzór," while also doing graphic design for the Foreign Exhibitions and Fairs Company in Warsaw.

In 1970 she moved to London and settled there permanently. From her first moments in London, she worked creatively. The artist's solo exhibition was held in 1972 at Woodstock Gallery. It was controversial for its time because of its content (erotica). The canvases, covered thickly with paint using spatula, painted in the style of German Expressionism, made a great impression on the audience. The entire exhibition was purchased by an American collector from Palm Beach. With the money earned from the sale of her paintings, the painter traveled to Greece. The landscape and colors of Greece made a great impression on her. After a stay in Greece, a series of three-dimensional paintings was created. Back then it was very modern and original painting in today's 3D sense. The paintings resembled giant surrealist sculptures. In 1976, she won a prestigious award for them in the US.

The next stage in her work is holograms made from sculptures she has made. She showed them at an exhibition held at a gallery in Monte Carlo. In the search for Manka Dowling's creative path, a great role was played by her numerous travels. After one, influenced by the landscape of southern France and Tuscany, color comes to the fore in her paintings. Simplified compositions with vivid colors are created, blurring the three-dimensionality of the representations. She looks for the rhythms found in nature, and what she perceives in the layers of her consciousness appears on canvas. She paints poetic paintings referring to the paintings of Chagall as well as Kandinsky, but always doing it in his own way. A series of canvases built from synthetic stylizations of landscapes, people and flowers is created.

Continuing her artistic work, Mañka Dowling also curates her own exhibitions as well as those of friendly artists. She has organized a couple of prestigious international exhibitions. Among others, she works with galleries in Sweden England Poland and Russia. A member of the Polish Association of Artists in England, she actively participates in all exhibitions organized by the Association. In her work, she never stops searching. Her painting goes in the direction of deformation of space and perspective. she increasingly simplifies forms , figural motifs take on geometric shapes. At all times, the most important thing in Mańka Dowling's painting is evocative color. Currently, the artist is oscillating towards abstraction, which she undoubtedly reaches through color. Despite the change in style, Mańka Dowling's paintings have an individual stamp and her paintings are easily recognizable. She does not stop in her creative work. You can see that she loves to paint and exhibit her paintings. The markers of her work are talent, humor and an extraordinary sense of color. She has participated in countless art journeys, which have been and continue to be a constant inspiration for her work. The artist's paintings are held by collectors and art lovers around the world, among others. In London, Poland, Germany, Mexico, USA, Sweden, Syria, Russia. Exhibitions of paintings by this extremely talented painter, who is sensitive to the world and to others, were held there.

Fans of Mańka Dowling's talent in May will have the opportunity to see her latest paintings at an exhibition entitled Two Sisters, organized by the Limited Edition Gallery of Contemporary Art, located at Rozbrat 44A in Warsaw's Powisle district. For the exhibition, Mańka Dowling invited a photographer living permanently in Australia - Kashka Vranken - privately her equally talented sister.

Kashka Vranken - photography

Textures, forms, light and changes in nature, I try to understand through photographs.
Kashka Vranken

Graphic designer by training photographer by passion. She earned her bachelor's degree in graphic design at the Central School of Art and Desing in London, and her master's degree in art in the studio of Maciej Urbanec at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw (1977). Born in Warsaw, she has lived in Australia for years.

She was interested in photography from an early age, fascinated by frames from Akira Kurosawa's films. The first realizations were black-and-white photos. This type of photography - classic analog in the form of an unmanipulated single frame - remained in the area of the artist's creative interests for many years. Fascinated by the achievements of the eminent British photographer Bill Brandt, a close associate of the surrealist Man Ray, she began to experiment in the field of black-and-white photography. With the new technologies associated with the possibilities of digital photography, she began experimenting with the use of color, resulting in close associations with painting. The resulting works, poetic in their expression, were made using a technique of her own, which she arrived at through experimentation with colors, without the use of graphic programs. The camera, as she says, is her third eye, allowing her to understand the phenomena occurring in close reality The textures occurring in nature, forms and light, always remain in the sphere of interest of the photographer. She uses macro-photography to depict usually difficult to see with the naked eye, often fleeting phenomena occurring around. She treats photographs very personally, through the medium she tries to understand the surrounding world, showing the changes taking place in nature The artist's sporadic participation in exhibitions, suggests more interest in the creative process itself than in the finished work.

Exhibitions in Sydney, Berlin and Poland.

Curator of the exhibition: Wieslawa Widerinska