Night and Day

Night and Day paintings are based loosely on the popular story The Little Prince with candid yet playful portraits of my two sons (as well as other family members). Brushy with heavy glazing and a robust almost neo-classical palette, the paintings capture my young protagonists in moments of solitude and contemplation. Relatively modest in scale, the works on wood and linen allow for an intimate interlude with people who are in flux or just waiting. The presentation evokes turn of the century séances and the Victorian desire to communicate with the dead while at the same time showing a more innocent and banal transition from adolescence to adulthood. This paradox between creative imagination and grief mirrors the experience of the author of The Little Prince Antoine de Saint-Exupéry whose own harrowing plane crash inspired the famous story. It is a tender mediation on love, its power and the uncontrollable elements that define its borders. Recognizing my own mortality, I have confronted one of the most archetypal themes of art, how best to memorialize something that is fleeting.

The Polish painter's new series of small-ish portraits of her children and other relatives, allegedly inspired by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's "The Little Prince," speaks of nostalgia for the uninhibited inner worlds of childhood, though the show's most affecting piece isn't the most whimsical (which co-stars fuzzy, Gizmo-like creatures), but an off-kilter reflection of her son Mike in a darkened computer screen.
— Benjamin Sutton, ARTINFO, June 2012