Julia Medinskaya, The Actress, 2021.

Julia Medynska (b. 1981, Gdansk),
The Actress, 2021.
oil on canvas, 50 x 40 cm

Painter and actress. In 1985, she fled to West Berlin with her family as a little girl. Through various artistic activities, she usually found an outlet for her emotions in art. After high school graduation and graduation from high school, she moved to New York to study acting at the Lee Strasberg Theatre and The Neighborhood Playhouse. She performed at the OFF-Broadway Manhattan Ensemble Theatre. Soon after, she brought movement, poses and gestures, just from the theater, into the framework of her painting performances. In 2009, she took up visual arts studies at Columbia University, earning a master's degree. Since then, she has participated in many group exhibitions. She has received awards and prizes for her paintings. She was awarded a scholarship from the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation. She is currently preparing for a solo exhibition in London (School Gallery, July 2021).

The painter, after spending years in Berlin, New York and London, decided to take refuge, with her family, in Poland for a time of pandemonium and isolation. For more than a year now, she has lived here and also paints here, enjoying the charms and tranquility of the Polish countryside.

At the exhibition we will see oil paintings, created over the past few years.

Julia Medynska usually shows the heroes of her paintings in expressive, theatrical, dramatic poses, under the pressure of existential trembling and trepidation, often in gestures of suffering. Through allegory, the characters' psychological states, which are difficult to grasp, become more tangible to the viewer. The dramatic atmosphere of the painted works, is further influenced by, strong chiaroscuro contrasts. Very important in her work is the motif of the mask, costume, disguise, the human struggle with the process of hiding his true face, the character in his own person, his true nature and his experiences.