C A N N O P Y
Art is True North
Phantom Details: Agata Wierzbicka
WARSAW | “If you want to create and you have such a strenuous need, it won't matter to you if you have a large or small studio”
WORDS BY BEN McHUTCHION | STUDIO SESSIONS
NOV 10, 2024 | ISSUE 14
Agata Wierzbicka, Red Part 2
Agata Wierzbicka in Studio
Agata Wierzbicka's Studio
Agata Wierzbicka's Studio
The art of Warsaw-based illustrator Agata Wierzbicka often subverts expectations. Her portraits frequently hide her subjects’ faces, while her fashion drawings leave most of an ensemble up to the imagination. These creative choices align well with her preference for minimalism. Wierzbicka believes her architectural training has also influenced her creative process, teaching her to subtract unnecessary elements until a satisfactory purity of form is revealed. The omitted elements in her work are, however, full of phantom details. Her fashion illustrations employ simple forms such as sparse line drawings and simple blocks of colour, giving the viewer just enough to get a sense of an outfit. Sections apparently left undrawn may be made whole by the judicious shaping of background forms to complete a figure’s outline. It all makes for an engaging visual puzzle, confounding the usual expectations of background, foreground, and figural integrity. This is not colouring outside the lines; the lines are gone, and they are not missed.
Wierzbicka’s portraits show an additional interest in drawing a contrast between absence and detail. It is rare to see an unobscured face in her drawings. When drawing people, she often hinders the view of their eyes with hair, glasses, a raised hand, or a carefully placed leaf. Often, her faces are inaccessible simply because her figures are drawn facing away from, or sideways to the viewer. Wierzbicka prefers to explore what a portrait can say through means other than facial expressions, including movement, gesture, silhouette, and hands. Clothing is another notable tool she employs to give a sense of her subjects. Her portraits are highly detailed in some aspects, such as the portrayal of lines and creases of hands, or the nuances of colour and texture in a person’s skin and hair. From areas of high definition, her figures may fade gently into the background, or be cut off abruptly by unfinished areas.
There is another side to Wierzbicka’s art. Working for commercial clients, she has developed a reputation for botanical illustrations. These designs have adorned product packaging, the wallpaper of real-world coffee houses, and the web pages of online stores. Her clients’ tastes have dictated that she employs a greater degree of detail in these works, challenging her preference for minimalism. Wierzbicka’s botanical drawings contain a limited palette of colours with shared undertones, producing images that range in the complexity of their compositions, but always exude a luxurious sense of calm.
Wierzbicka is forthcoming about her personality. Introverted and easily overstimulated, her studio is a stripped-down, calming environment that fits her needs. She purposefully uses only a few colours for her studio space, mainly whites, creams, and browns. A bank of windows provides ample natural light. The effect of her studio’s unornamented, functional furniture is softened with organic accents, including plants (perhaps a helpful inspiration for botanical drawings), fibrous rugs, and faux fur. She works alone, accompanied by her vegetal companions—indoor mainstays including umbrella tree, snake plant, and dracaena.
To think of her working in this space, a “cell” by her own description, conjures up the cliché of the medieval monastic artist: meditatively illuminating the pages of a manuscript in silence and solitude. In contrast to such a figure, Wierzbicka must contend with the extroverted aspects required of her career. While she says she does not consider the viewer’s perspective while creating her work, she acknowledges a struggle to free herself from the opinions of others. Any art intended for public viewing is, after all, a social act, putting an aspect of the interior self on display, to be seen—and judged.
Wierzbicka’s studio matches her drawings in multiple ways, such as her preference for neutral colours and the overall minimalism she employs in decorating the space. Even when she poses for a portrait photo, she chooses to sit sideways to the camera, her face obscured behind a short curtain of hair, an obvious echo of her portraits. One might wonder whether the hidden faces in Wierzbicka’s portraits are meant to evoke a sense of privacy, reflecting the solitary space she seeks during her artistic endeavours.
Interview with Agata Wierzbicka
SIMPLE SATURATION
CAN | Your art tends to traffic in the details invented by the viewer when perceiving a portrait that is “missing” certain features. When you’re working in this style, to what degree are you intentionally leaving space for the viewer to fill in the gaps of what they’re seeing?
AW — I don't think about how the viewer will perceive my artworks when I’m creating them. Of course I am very curious about that, but I’d rather think about what I want to express. Often, what I come up with at the beginning just doesn’t work, so I keep adding and removing elements, checking intuitively if the composition is good. Intuition plays a decisive role in the creative process when it comes to composition, you know? My architectural training has a significant influence on my eye for subtracting elements, creating empty spaces.
I use exactly as many elements as needed to convey an idea. If there are too many, I simply remove them. Architecture definitely taught me the purity of form, there is no room for coincidence. My style has been changing a bit, now I like to add additional forms that add a certain weight. Earlier, I would have subtracted them, but now I want the work to be slightly overloaded sometimes, which is definitely influenced by paintings from Dutch Realism. Simple but saturated.
BOTANICALS
CAN | In sharp contrast to the abstractions in your portraits, your botanical illustrations are often teeming with lush details, and invite much closer observation from the viewer. Have you consciously cultivated the co-evolution of these two contrasting aesthetics?
AW — As for botanical illustration, I mainly developed the botanicals as commercial art, designing them to become wallpapers, paintings, cosmetics packagings, newspaper illustrations and the like. The degree of details in these illustrations depended on the client’s preference—I left it in their hands. For a long time, I remained very conflicted because I just felt that these two aesthetics were completely different worlds. Nevertheless, the amount of botanical commissions I did allowed me to make a living and I had the time and resources to create portraits. Nowadays, the proportions have strongly changed. I create fewer botanicals, which have also changed in style as well. I just like when they are layered with detail, inspired by wallpapers of the Regency era.
CAN | What do you think your art reveals about your internal psyche as a creative?
AW — I never really thought about what my works say about me … only maybe that I’m definitely a fan of minimalism. It certainly says that I’m an introvert who prefers to express herself through what she does and is struggling to free herself from human opinion, sympathy, or approval. A perfectionist full of anxieties.
STUDIO SPACE
CAN | How would you describe the general atmosphere of your studio space and how does it reflect your creative personality?
AW — I used to dismiss the proverb that a bad workman always blames his tools. If you want to create and you have such a strenuous need, it won’t matter to you if you have a large or small studio, or maybe it’s a desk set aside in your bedroom or living room. Of course, some conditions are more conducive to work, others less so, but if you don't want to work, you'll find any excuse. As my dear friend and artist Agata Rek often says: “we work with what we have”—this has become my life-motto.
For me, the most important thing in the studio is tranquillity. Both the visual and mental kind. All ‘technical’ furniture (cabinets, desk, shelves), as well as the floor and the walls should be in one light colour. This calms me down, makes it easier for me to concentrate. I’m very overstimulated anyway, so the room I work in has to be bright and fairly orderly. No chaos. Cohesive. Of course, I like to surround myself with pretty things, flowers, or sentimental objects—it’s the atmosphere of a sterile interior, but at least it’s a little cosy.
Silence is also extremely important to me. I had a really nice studio close to home, which I unfortunately had to give up, for various reasons, but mostly because it was terribly exposed to the noises of the city: a train station nearby and a very noisy street. The summers were downright unbearable. After eight hours in the studio, I’d be extremely exhausted by the heat and noise.