W moich ostatnich lekturach i inspiracjach coraz częściej powracam do pytania o istotę sztuki. Mówi się, że jest ona esencją życia — tym, co nadaje mu szczególny smak i głębię — oraz że homo sapiens stał się prawdziwie człowiekiem w chwili, gdy poczuł potrzebę wyrażania siebie poprzez malunki naskalne czy drobne figurki wyrabiane z kości.                                                                                                                       Nie zawsze jednak ta powszechnie znana prawda o znaczeniu sztuki była we mnie w pełni obecna. Przez długie lata nie myślałam o niej zbyt wiele, bo ważniejsze wydawały się inne sprawy: miłość, dzieci, rodzina, przyjaźnie, praca. Wobec nich sztuka pozostawała raczej tłem — na którą  często brakowało czasu i sił, a chwilami nawet pieniędzy

In my recent readings and inspirations, I have been thinking a great deal about the nature of art. It is often said that art is the very essence of life — the element that gives it depth and flavour — and that homo sapiens truly became human at the moment when we felt the need to express ourselves through cave paintings or small figurines carved from bone.

Yet this widely acknowledged truth about the importance of art was not always fully present in my awareness. I rarely reflected on it, because other matters seemed more urgent: love, children, family, friendships, work — all of which made art feel like a distant backdrop, something for which there was often too little time, energy, or sometimes even money.

Life in emigration, especially in the beginning, pushed conscious engagement with art even further aside. First, one simply had to survive — raising small children in a foreign country, in an unfamiliar language. Learning to inhabit a new reality was an all-consuming task.

And yet, quietly and almost unnoticed, moments of wonder would appear: a painting, a theatre performance, a ballet, a film, and most often a book. These encounters slowly awakened in me an ever-growing need to create. I had always drawn, but I wanted something more, and this eventually led me to undertake a year-long course in printmaking.

My work, too, especially over the past ten years, has partly satisfied this creative need. Architecture can be deeply creative — yet it is also bound by countless constraints, and not every commission makes the soul tremble.

So art accompanied me much like it accompanies most ordinary people — quietly, gently, enriching life without demanding attention. In return, I would sometimes marvel at it, sometimes pursue it with hunger, but more often I was absorbed by the ordinary rhythms of everyday life in a ten thousand different ways.

I only truly realised how essential art is to me during a psychological crisis. The support I found in turning toward art while emerging from that darkness was immeasurable. Today, when I listen to old radio recordings of great Polish icon painter Jerzy Nowosielski saying that ''art saves a human being'', I know from experience that this is true.

For what would we be without art? Béla Hamvas, echoing an ancient Iranian tradition, wrote that without it we would resemble ants — endlessly running back and forth without reflection or rest, labouring ceaselessly merely to sustain our anthill.

And yet, as this Hungarian writer reminds us:

"Art awakens the forces that guide humanity. It is far more important than science, more important than state knowledge, morality, law, and in an inexplicable way — even more important than religion. (…) Only art has preserved a bond with transcendence. Only art possesses faith. And faith, as we know, moves mountains — it sets powers in motion. Thus the faith of art independently determines which forces it will awaken, which it will empower, which it will remove, and which it will liberate from the vortex whose magician is the artist."

For Nowosielski, art was complete freedom. Once, when other Polish artist Kantor forbade him to continue working on a painting because "art does not allow it," he replied simply: "My art allows me everything."

That is why I love drawing and printmaking — because within art I am allowed everything, even to lose my mind. It is a true luxury. Gombrowicz wrote of art in a similar spirit:

"Art is luxury, freedom, play, dream, and strength. It does not arise from poverty, but from abundance. There is something triumphant within it — even when it wrings its hands."

Krzysztof Kieślowski, one of my most beloved artists, once said that art is something through which we grow. I have always loved that definition. Today's print is inspired by his film The Double Life of Véronique. It is a variation on several frames in which Véronique, travelling by train, looks at the world through a small glass sphere — causing everything she sees to turn upside down.

Is this not precisely what art does to us? Does it not overturn our assumptions about the world and about ourselves, compelling us again and again to look more closely — with greater attention, tenderness, sometimes concern, and even fear?

Hamvas also wrote about drops of honey that sweeten even the hardest fate — and art can be the source of such sweetness. For me, that is exactly what it is: small, luminous drops of honey.