Uploaded October 2022 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
“I create tiny worlds in thread to capture elusive yet persistent inner voices. Literary snippets, memories, personal mythologies, and art historical references inform the imagery; fused together, these influences explore relationships, domesticity and self-perception. Symbolism and allegory lay bare dynamics of aspiration and limitation, expectation and loss, belonging and alienation, truth and illusion.”
[from: theinspirationgrid.com/embroidered-illustrations-by-michelle-kingdom/]
My work explores psychological landscapes, tiny worlds in thread that capture elusive, persistent inner voices. Memories, histories, and mythologies collide amid an undercurrent of political turbulence. Entwined, these influences explore power, relationships and self-perception. Opposing dynamics of aspiration and limitation, expectation and loss, belonging and alienation, truth and illusion, are laid bare through symbolism and allegory.
Diminutive scenes are densely compressed into embroidered compositions. While the work acknowledges the luster and lineage inherent in needlework, thread becomes a sketching tool to both honor and undermine its past. Traditional stitches acquiesce to the fragile and expressive, where beauty is paralleled by melancholy.
[from: michellekingdom.com/]
Music: Chihei Hatakeyama "Ocean To Ocean"
“I create tiny worlds in thread to capture elusive yet persistent inner voices. Literary snippets, memories, personal mythologies, and art historical references inform the imagery; fused together, these influences explore relationships, domesticity and self-perception. Symbolism and allegory lay bare dynamics of aspiration and limitation, expectation and loss, belonging and alienation, truth and illusion.”
[from: theinspirationgrid.com/embroidered-illustrations-by-michelle-kingdom/]
My work explores psychological landscapes, tiny worlds in thread that capture elusive, persistent inner voices. Memories, histories, and mythologies collide amid an undercurrent of political turbulence. Entwined, these influences explore power, relationships and self-perception. Opposing dynamics of aspiration and limitation, expectation and loss, belonging and alienation, truth and illusion, are laid bare through symbolism and allegory.
Diminutive scenes are densely compressed into embroidered compositions. While the work acknowledges the luster and lineage inherent in needlework, thread becomes a sketching tool to both honor and undermine its past. Traditional stitches acquiesce to the fragile and expressive, where beauty is paralleled by melancholy.
[from: michellekingdom.com/]
Music: Chihei Hatakeyama "Ocean To Ocean"
![Aleksandra Waliszewska [Part 2]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/ssrZw8hDJIU/mqdefault.jpg "Aleksandra Waliszewska [Part 2]
The young painters nasty children and fantastic animals invade the canvas with their morbid figures and jarring symbolism as she creates a new Gothic style that meshes surrealist imagery, medieval mystery, fairy tale themes and references to the likes of Hieronim Bosch and Francisco de Goya.
Her early works were inspired by the Quattrocenta style characteristic of the work of Piero Della Francesa, Masaccio and Giotto. Of greatest interest was the role of colour and mood, and the way these 14th-century masters applied paint to the canvas. These inspirations were combined with themes that wove throughout modern art and contemporary art history, as well as the immediate world around her. In her 2000 work Three Graces, an iconic painting of the Madonna is paired with a television set. For Waliszewska, the composition of the image is of principal importance. She also cites the works of Polish graphic artists from the 16th century: Tomasz Treter (1547-1610) and Jan Ziarnko (1575-1628) as greatly inspiring for a number of her works. One of her ambitions is to create a publication that would juxtapose their works with her own, illustrating the threads that connect them.
Moreover, in her paintings one can recognise compositions similar to those from Paolo Uccellos frescoes in the cloisters of the Santa Maria Novella church in Florence, or the atmosphere of Vermeers interiors and even the mystical unrest of Giorgio de Chiricos works. Waliszewskas tasteful and aesthetic canvases brought recognition and first exhibition proposals even during her studies.
Her technique varies from a childlike nonchalance to detailed precision in her depictions of uncanny scenes of battling beasts, children lost in the woods, skulls and skeletons, portraits of faces with missing features or exposed musculature. A lone baby elephant would be sweet if not for the unnervingly evil expression on its face. Her works are unpleasant, often obscene, yet there is something magical about them that draws the viewer in and holds tight. She draws on a shared magazine of popular symbols from horror films, comic books, heavy metal and current events.
Waliszewskas works also inspire other artists across genres - most recently Greek film director Athina Rachel Tsangari, known for the award-winning independent film Attenberg (2010) made a film inspired by a series of drawings by Waliszewska. The Capsule was produced in 2012, along with an art installation, as a commission for the DesteFashionCollection 2012, sponsored by art collector Dakis Joannou. Immaculately filmed, with an enigmatic storyline, the production treads the fine line between art and arthouse cinema.
[from: https://culture.pl/en/artist/aleksandra-waliszewska]
Music: Alio Die Imaginal Symmetry
Part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWP_OKuVoSQ&t=233s")
