Zuzanna is a Fine Art artist currently based in Edinburgh. She graduated from Painting at Gray’s School of Art in Aberdeen, Scotland in 2020. Born in Katowice, Poland, she finished her secondary and high school education at the High School of Fine Art with a specialisation in Silversmithing and a diploma in Painting and History of Art. Between January and June 2019, she was studying at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague. She exhibited in many international group exhibitions including the Royal Academy of Arts, the Royal Society of British Artists, the New English Art Club in Mall Galleries, and the Royal Scottish Academy Annual exhibitions. In June 2020 she was awarded the Royal Scottish Academy John Kinross Scholarship which allowed her to go on a research trip to Florence, Italy. In 2021 she was awarded the Hermione Hammond Drawing Award and in 2024 she was awarded The Laszlo Medal for Excellence. Zuzanna's works can be found in private collections in Poland, Germany, Hong Kong, England, Scotland, Italy, the Czech Republic, Iceland, and the USA.
'Feathers recur in Zuzanna Salamon’s work, and like the cyclical drift of nature, they provide motif, symbol, and sign. At the same time as gesturing towards the artist’s interest in migration across cultures, they provide a unique challenge for her primary medium, charcoal, to render their textural specificity in a way that we experience as true. In ‘All birds forgot to sing’ what is impressive is the breadth of the scene and the minutiae of its contents: grass blades, the fringes of feathers, folds of a curtain, a flock of birds and their individual silhouettes, the sky and its shadings of light... all rendered in charcoal alone.
‘I try to grow new roots in the land I call foreign’ is another title evoking a mythic and a personal story. The realism with which the wooden floor in the background is rendered is a delight to see. Salamon’s paintings can be moody; they are always beautiful. In them trees and their fallen leaves also reoccur: the subject is growth, but in its complexity, interlocked as it is with questions of ritual, change, and the environment – nature, but as it is interwoven with meaning for human eyes.'
NewBloodArt 2021
Artist Statement
My studio practice focuses on the relationship between light and shadow, and how it can reveal the hidden poetry residing within the human form and nature. The reality of my work falls between the real and imaginary world and fuses elements from both. This creates a poetic sensibility that often feels dreamlike. The subject of my work organically originates from experiences available to every human - who we are, how we love and suffer, how we miss and how we hope. Dramatic lighting, present silence, and lack of movement dominate in my drawings, giving the impression of moments frozen in time. Through this, I try to create storytelling that attempts to connect with the viewer on an emotional level.
My work has a personal and diary character - in this sense, they are also a story about my life, fears and desires. Therefore, the details and symbolism that I use in my work are guided mostly by feeling and intuition. They are often based on my own experience of longing for a homeland and Slavic culture, which consists of rituals involving worshipping the elemental grandeur of nature.
Because of its immediacy, mark-making, and tonality, charcoal is currently my primary medium. Charcoal allows me to deeply participate in the drawing process, using my hands directly on the surface to smudge and form shapes and therefore, get involved with the subject on a very practical and personal level.