Details

First Name	Linda
Last Name	Kosciewicz
Username	lindakosciewicz
Region	Angus
Disciplines	Drawing, Installation, Moving Image, Painting, Performance, Photography, Printmaking, Sound
Themes	Botanical, Environment, Figurative, Identity, Landscape, Site-specific, Portraits, Narratives

Statement

Self representation and performance has been an important element of my work over the last ten years. It has its roots in the years I spent as a singer and performer. In the current pandemic world I have turned increasingly to stories and myths as a way of exploring what at times seems a surreal world. My current preoccupations include exploring the personal and universal symbolism found in folk tales and myths and the ways these can be used to explain the human response to the world and the environment. I am interested in the way that every generation has repurposed these stories again and again to provide a vehicle to articulate difficult, emotional and complex ideas and experiences.

At the moment, I am exploring stories linking people and nature. I have long been fascinated by the human connection and disconnection with nature and the representation of this in art, writing, music and theatre. Tree stories are a current focus, such as Ovid’s Daphne where Daphne is transformed into a laurel tree and Shakespeare’s The Tempest where Ariel, spirit of the air is released from his prison in a cloven pine tree, by Prospero the magician.

Biography

I was born in Scotland and trained in painting at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art, Dundee followed by fine art painting conservation at Northumbria University. My art practice encompasses photography, printmaking, mixed media, video, sound, music, and drawing.

In 2012 I won the Pauline Fay Lazarus prize for work based on the human body and in 2010 and 2012 respectively, I received Visual Arts Awards from Fife Council, Scotland for photography and multi media projects. The first “Nine thoughts: A riff on fragmentation and loss” about the impacts of dementia on close family members included music written and performed by myself. Mirror Mirror considered body image and the male gaze.

I performed my White Series; which is a series of photogravures and video based on gestures and movements inspired by women’s relationship to the colour white and the poetry of Sylvia Plath. Images from this series have been exhibited throughout the UK, in France, Poland and Malaysia. In 2011, she was a finalist in the International Photography Open Salon, Arles, France with the image “Breath of Life” from the series. That same year images from the White Series were published in the Plath Profiles and more recently again in 2019.

Dance and music were key elements of the video and photography project Transformations: Life Portraits that I carried out for the University of Edinburgh. It explored life course and movement through ageing bodies. Using four volunteers from the Lothian Birth Cohort, I choreographed a sequence of movements which I set to a deconstructed piece of music from 1936, the year of their birth.

Portraiture and culture were the subject of Culture Club which took as its subject ten members of the Scottish Arts Club, Edinburgh. I carried out this project whilst in residence at the Scottish Arts Club. In 2013 I participated in a joint project between the Scottish Poetry Library and Edinburgh Printmakers Workshop and worked with writer Dorothy Alexander to produce polymer photogravures and a video based on random experimental text inspired by The White Series.

In June 2021, I undertook a residency at Merz in Sanquhar where I explored local stories about the Napoleonic prisoners to develop ideas for new work. Some of this work created as a result of the residency will be exhibited in an exhibition Storyforms , at the Patriothall Gallery Edinburgh with 2 other artists.

In July 2022, I had a featured artist show at Glasgow Print Studio and I will be part of the 50th anniversary of the Glasgow Print Studio and will be showing my work in the Kelvingrove Art Gallery in November 2022 in the Love of Print Exhibition there. This exhibition toured to the Rozelle Gallery, Ayr in May 2023.

Linda Kosciewicz