When I landed in Lanzarote a few years ago, I didn't yet know that this small Atlantic island would change my life. I left Warsaw feeling tired and with a premonition that I needed a fresh start. I hadn't planned on becoming a painter or opening a home for people from all over the world. I just wanted to catch my breath. It was only here, amidst the volcanoes and the ocean, that I understood that catching one's breath could become a path.
The first few months were like slowly getting used to the light. I collected driftwood, string, and discarded trinkets on the beaches that the ocean threw up. Together with my son, I arranged them into small compositions, not yet thinking of it as art. It was more of an attempt to organise my inner self, the first glimmer of a language that had remained dormant within me for years.
I started painting with my son's borrowed paints. I felt a strange, joyful relief then – something that had been suppressed for years finally opened up. Yet, the fear of judgment still accompanied me, the fear that I was doing something too personal, too unknown. I listened to the island, but I didn't quite know where it was leading me. And then something happened which I still remember as...
