After obtaining a degree in Fine Art from Hull College Irena Kurowska studied art psychotherapy at Queen Margaret University in Edinburgh. For many years she worked in the NHS and privately as a therapist. Irena is now retired and enjoys having more time to paint.

I am drawn to the quiet moments in life and nature is my ideal subject. I love the beauty of flowers and the innate abstraction of nature’s patterns. I am delighted by both their tranquillity and playfulness. Sometimes my paintings focus on the sense of stillness and reflection in nature with a subtle soft aesthetic of muted colours. And sometimes I am attracted to the ornamental, colourful, blowsy exuberance which calls for more saturated and intense colour. Flowers with their colour, fragility, joyfulness and harmony embody so many different facets that I want to explore and express in my work.

I work from memory aided by sketches and photographs. My work is spontaneous and intuitive and process-led. Often a desire to explore the physicality of texture leads to repetitively obliterating and uncovering surface mark-making and i very much enjoy experimenting and following the way the paint leads me.