Blog

The Line Down the Middle

She sits inside a painting split clean in half — green on one side, red on the other, a single white line running through her like a decision that never resolves. The story behind Between Green and Red, and the quiet architecture we build around our own contradictions.

She has no name. Her existence is not in doubt

Is it worth portraying someone who is nobody? I asked myself that in the studio, and then I made the image anyway. Her existence is not in doubt — only her name is missing.

September 5, 2026

Can Color be a shelter?

A painting built from one question: can a colour become a place to hide inside? Jolanta Johnsson on making Pink as Shelter, the politics of pink, and the figure who chose the colour and made it her own.

August 21, 2026

An Angel, Not a Man

Do angels exist? Faith says one thing and science another — yet almost everyone would quietly like one of their own. A pen-and-ink drawing from 1997 about being held, and about the people we describe, in Polish, as an angel rather than a man.

August 18, 2026

Couple – Studies

Two figures in an armchair, and between them a white form I left undrawn. That empty shape is the space of the relationship — and it has to be filled.

August 14, 2026

Should an Artist Write About Her Own Work?

Strictly speaking, an artist does not have to explain herself. She has already spoken — in the painting. And yet the history of visual art is written in words, and today an artist's own account of her work is not merely welcome but expected. A letter on why I have decided to write.

August 10, 2026

Hidden logic

It was summer, and green surrounded me on every side. The sun was not sparing with its light, and on the lake the waves kept flashing. I wanted to write those sensations onto canvas — and then, as always, the question arrived: how?

August 5, 2026

The colour grey

Grey means monotony, the commonplace, the absence of colour. I chose it anyway for many of my monotypes — for one practical reason, and one that is not.

August 1, 2026

The Grey Man and the Secret He Is Holding

In Polish we say szary człowiek — the grey man — of someone who does not catch the eye, who lives quietly and holds neither power nor fame. Grey is neither warm nor cold; it suits the ordinary person exactly. My grey man sits facing you, his head tilted, holding a secret he seems to want to hide inside himself.

July 31, 2026

To Each Our Own

All the prints in the series Human are vertical. This one lies down — a woman and a man resting side by side, both cut off at the legs by a frame that isn't there. I no longer remember why. What I do remember is what happened when their legs joined instead of crossing.

July 27, 2026

Before printing, on the press

In 1998 I wanted to place two figures in a landscape, and it would not work. Then I picked up a pair of scissors and began cutting the matrix away. What emerged from under the blades became the Human series — and taught me that form is the architecture of every work.

July 17, 2026

Who Carries the Woman, Who Carries Everyone?

There is a word we reach for when we want to say the highest thing about a woman. Not beautiful, not accomplished, not kind — though we mean all of those. We say: superwoman. I have been thinking about that word for a long time.