See/ Hear/ Read #8: Maja Lorkowska’s ‘Water’ collage series

By Maja Lorkowska November 23, 2020

I began making collages back in my art student days. After university my focus shifted to writing, full time work and visiting galleries to see other people’s work, rather than my own artistic ambitions.

This year it all changed – with that little bit of extra time gained by the lack of coffees and catch-ups I started to regularly dedicate my post-work evenings to collage and textiles, aka art making. Here I’ll share with you my ‘Water’ series – a set of works dedicated to its ever-changing forms.

Water can be freedom, ease, calm.
Floating, weightlessness, serenity.
Murky peril, the deep unknown, waves crashing against slimy rocks.

In recent months, there has been no sense of ease, no floating. I guess I created it myself: an oasis of cutting and arranging, dripping and dropping elements on top of one another, leaving them, coming back, rearranging, glue marks, ‘a-ha!’ moments, accidentally pushing something off the desk with my elbow and realising that it looks better on top of the image it fell on.

I focused on the existence of water in natural spaces rather than the bedside glass. On the waves for both their unrepeatable patterns and mesmerising repetitiveness. On the open space, deafening waterfalls and translucent colours.

When passing a lake, I often want to jump in and change my mind at the last moment, plunging into fear, not liquid. I think, perhaps, next time I will.