When Art Becomes an Unavoidable Calling
Recognizing an artistic identity can take far longer than discovering the impulse to create. For Malwina Jachimczak, claiming the words “I’m an artist” was not a simple declaration but the result of years spent questioning herself, navigating expectations, and searching for a life that felt authentic. Although creativity attracted her from childhood, she initially pursued design at the Academy of Fine Arts, believing painting might simply be an impractical fascination rather than a genuine vocation. That decision soon revealed itself to be a poor fit, encouraging her to continue searching for a discipline that could better accommodate her curiosity and emotional life. Cultural studies ultimately transformed her perspective by encouraging critical thinking, challenging inherited assumptions, and restoring an appreciation for the full range of human emotions. Growing up in an environment where emotional expression was constrained left a lasting impression, making this academic experience deeply significant. Later postgraduate studies in socio cultural gender identity, alongside jewelry, ceramics, and precious metal processing, further broadened her understanding of artistic practice while reinforcing a more conscious and intentional relationship with creative work.
The path toward painting was anything but linear. After graduating, Jachimczak entered a period of profound despair during which she believed her future had reached its end. A turning point emerged unexpectedly through volunteering with injured and disabled wild birds. Caring for vulnerable animals introduced daily experiences of responsibility, affection, uncertainty, and resilience that gradually reshaped her outlook. Those birds remain an essential part of her life and continue to influence her creative process. Their presence coincided with a renewed commitment to painting, this time driven not by external expectations but by conviction. Instead of measuring success through conventional definitions, she embraced artistic practice with determination and clarity. The decision to return to painting became inseparable from a broader commitment to living honestly according to her values, regardless of societal pressures or assumptions about what constitutes a sensible career.
Painting repeatedly returned throughout periods when she attempted to distance herself from it. She experimented with different techniques, discarded materials, gave canvases away, and tried to redirect her attention elsewhere, yet the urge to paint persisted. Even during life’s darkest chapters, creating images offered a reason to continue moving forward. Eventually, this recurring pattern became impossible to ignore. Rather than resisting it, she accepted painting as the central force shaping her life. Today, that commitment is balanced by relationships with people who value openness, honesty, and thoughtful reflection, together with the daily care she provides for her birds. This combination of emotional experience, ethical awareness, and creative dedication forms the foundation of an artistic practice that prioritizes sincerity over convention and continually asks how art can express what matters most.
Malwina Jachimczak: Painting the Weight of Human Experience
Emotion stands at the center of Jachimczak’s paintings. Rather than treating art primarily as a visual exercise, she uses painting to examine experiences that define human existence, including love, grief, anger, life, death, and the fragile relationship between people and nature. Feminist perspectives also occupy an important place within her work, expanding these personal explorations into broader cultural conversations. Instead of offering simple statements, her paintings invite viewers to reflect on the emotional and ethical choices that shape everyday life. Questions surrounding consumption, identity, responsibility, and the natural world appear through carefully considered compositions that encourage contemplation rather than certainty. This emphasis on feeling over explanation gives her work a distinctive emotional presence while allowing individual viewers to bring their own experiences into conversation with each painting.
Her creative process reflects this emphasis on emotion. Jachimczak explains that she possesses virtually no visual memory, making traditional visual references less significant than sensory and emotional experiences. Sounds, lyrics, words, smells, tastes, ideas, and feelings provide the primary material from which her paintings emerge. Before beginning a work, she consciously considers composition, color relationships, and the emotional atmosphere she hopes to create. Once painting begins, however, analytical thought gives way to instinct. Music fills the studio, allowing conscious reflection to fade as the physical act of painting takes over. This balance between careful preparation and intuitive execution enables her work to remain emotionally direct while still demonstrating thoughtful formal construction.
Although internal experiences drive her practice, engagement with the work of other artists remains essential. Looking closely at paintings becomes an opportunity to study technique as much as meaning. Brushwork, color choices, tools, and compositional decisions are examined with curiosity rather than imitation. By breaking apart the formal language of other artists, she expands her own understanding of what painting can accomplish without sacrificing an individual voice. This ongoing dialogue with artistic traditions strengthens her ability to communicate emotion through visual form while continually challenging personal limitations. The result is a practice rooted in observation, experimentation, and an enduring commitment to expressive authenticity.
Songs, Symbols, and Paintings That Carry Personal Meaning
Music provides one of the strongest sources of inspiration within Jachimczak’s ongoing series Vases of Life. Song lyrics become points of departure for paintings that examine what people absorb emotionally each day, much like the objects and ideas that gradually shape identity. The series draws from an intentionally broad selection of music, including familiar pop songs whose seemingly simple lyrics often conceal deeper emotional questions about love, absence, memory, and connection. By translating these songs into paintings, she shifts attention from entertainment toward reflection, encouraging viewers to reconsider the emotional significance of words they may have heard countless times before. The paintings become visual spaces where music, memory, and lived experience intersect.
One particularly meaningful work from the series is Missing, inspired by Everything but the Girl and specifically the Todd Terry remix. The contrast between the remix’s powerful rhythmic structure and the gentle vocal performance informed the painting’s restrained palette and nostalgic atmosphere. Created with acrylic paint on canvas, the work later acquired an unexpected emotional dimension after it was given as a birthday gift to a friend. Shortly afterward, the friend experienced the loss of someone close, making the lyric “And I miss you like the deserts miss the rain” profoundly personal. That experience reinforced for Jachimczak the importance of remembering what truly matters before daily distractions obscure the relationships and moments that later become irreplaceable. The painting continues to embody that reminder through its quiet emotional presence.
Another significant work in the same series is Born This Way, created during Pride Month. While the song naturally evokes conversations about identity and acceptance, Jachimczak extends its meaning far beyond appearance or sexuality. The painting considers how individuals choose to live according to deeply held values, even when those choices involve sacrifice, inconvenience, or resistance to social expectations. Rather than accepting easy cultural narratives, the work asks how authenticity can be sustained within systems that often reward conformity. Both Born This Way and Missing are executed using acrylic paint, combining paint applied directly from the tube with spray paint, while stencils and masking techniques interact with expressive brushwork. This combination of controlled structure and painterly freedom mirrors the layered emotional questions explored throughout the series.
Malwina Jachimczak: Creating Space for New Narratives
Daily life within Jachimczak’s studio follows a rhythm shaped equally by artistic discipline and responsibility toward the birds under her care. Mornings begin with administrative tasks, correspondence, and research before attention shifts to feeding the birds, cleaning their spaces, and taking them to the aviary. Only after these routines are complete does uninterrupted studio time begin. She prefers sustained periods of concentration and avoids unnecessary interruptions, believing that creative momentum depends upon a calm environment. Working primarily during afternoons and nights allows her to immerse herself fully in painting while maintaining the balance required by both artistic practice and caregiving responsibilities. This carefully structured schedule supports the focused, series based approach that defines much of her work.
Her newest body of paintings, the Heroines series, presents a vision of feminine strength as a transformative force capable of creating spaces of beauty, safety, and harmony. The women who inhabit these paintings build their own Garden of Eden, not as passive figures, but as powerful protagonists who shape the world around them. They are surrounded by imposing beasts that symbolize powerful external forces, including society, patriarchy, capitalism, and other systems that seek to influence or control human lives. Rather than confronting these forces through conflict, the heroines tame them, befriend them, and establish relationships built on mutual recognition. The series is therefore a vision of symbiosis and synthesis, where strength is expressed through understanding, resilience, and the ability to transform power instead of simply resisting it. These animals are not representations of real wildlife, but symbolic embodiments of the complex forces that proactive and self-aware women learn to navigate, reshape, and ultimately coexist with.
Even while fully committed to current projects, Jachimczak constantly imagines future directions. New ideas regularly emerge, yet she intentionally allows them to wait until the appropriate time arrives. Instead of pursuing every possibility immediately, she believes concepts benefit from patience, gradually developing greater depth and clarity before becoming finished works. This willingness to let projects mature reflects the same thoughtful approach that has characterized her artistic journey from the beginning. Each series grows from lived experience, careful reflection, and emotional honesty, ensuring that every painting emerges not from urgency alone but from sustained commitment to meaningful expression.
To learn more about Malwina Jachimczak and follow her latest work, visit her Instagram: @malwina_jachimczak
