MAGDALENA MURASZKO-KOWALSKA

Beginnings
I have loved horses ever since I was a child. Actually, nobody knows how I got to it as “in my times” there were no more horses in my family. But since I was a little girl, I knew that what I wanted to do was to deal with those animals. As soon as I grew tall enough, which means I could look over the living fence bordering a riding ground in the Equestrian Centre in Kortowo, I managed to be accepted for horse-riding lessons and... I got scared! It was true for me what they say about novice horse-riders: their lives are in danger as both sides of a horse are very steep for them. It took me a very long time to get acquainted with horses; at first, I preferred loving them from afar. But when I got hooked on horses, there wasn’t a day that I wouldn’t have gone throughout the whole city to Kortowo at least to stroke or feed my beloved animals.

School of Fine Arts
I didn’t draw at that time. It didn’t even cross my mind that a pencil could be used for something more than doodling mindlessly on pieces of paper while hanging on the phone with my friends. And I guess that it was because of those doodles that my darling Mom recognized some kind of a dormant talent in me. Getting over my protests, I was made to apply to a local secondary school of fine arts... I had to prove myself somehow before the examinations, prepare myself - but those everyday training sessions... I didn’t quite have time for that, so my sculpting exercises usually ended up with one... horse head modelled in plasticine and one sketch of a human figure. But I really didn’t want to be an artist! I dreamt of a general secondary school and studying veterinary medicine after that.

I passed the examinations with a high score... Well… Having passed them, I had to go to that school of fine arts. So, I did. After a month, I was already in love with the school, new challenges, and the teachers’ unusual approach to their students. It was getting harder year by year, mostly because a curriculum of the general secondary school had to be supplemented with art classes: additional seven hours of drawing and painting, four hours of sculpting, six hours of pottery-making, technical drawing, art history, and technology... What’s more, I managed to get to a sport horse jumping team in the meantime, so I really didn’t have a day off; I had to be in the stables everyday...

Studying
In the blink of an eye, the school was over and by that time my dreams regarding what to study changed completely: now, art history was on my mind. I loved that subject at school though it was taught by our most exacting teacher and all of us feared her... Perhaps, that’s why I learned everything by rote for those lessons... Anyway, I finally chose the University of Warsaw. I went there to file my application and... it turned out that art history is mostly modern art which is not particularly up to my taste… and the Institute of Archaeology was quite close. So, I finally graduated from archaeology and majored in Egyptian pottery.

It was archaeology that brought me the greatest adventure of my life: I started visiting Egypt for excavations when it still was a very inaccessible country, before it turned into a leading tourist resort for Europeans... And I kept drawing all the time there: I was into pottery and I was into drawings. And in the meantime, I additionally got qualified as a horse riding instructor and a judge in dressage, jumping, and eventing.

And if a keen horse rider, instructor, dressage judge and at the same time an archaeologist and artist combines all her passions into one, it must end up like that…

Passion
Drawing horses has become my great passion. Horses depicted in a classic way as those animals are so unique that they don’t need any adornments; it’s enough to see them as they are... I forget the world when drawing horses: I feel nothing, I hear nothing, I see nothing but a pencil and a sheet of paper. I forget even to eat or drink; I’m in a totally different world. I do my best to reflect character and temperament of a horse so that a viewer could learn as much as possible about that animal.

When watching my works, one of my friends says: It’s easy! You just put a sheet of paper to a horse muzzle and pull a pencil up and down on the other side. It’s not that easy, though…   


I combine contours and chiaroscuro in my drawings. Yet, it is plastic modelling of the light that I focus mostly on and I use the chiaroscuro technique for that. I apply contours for initial sketches only to fix the directions of my drawings and to set the blocks that are later filled by lights and shadows.

 

Moje prace można oglądać na stronie www.rysunkimagdy.pl, oraz na fanpejdżu
fejsbukowym: Magdalena Muraszko-Kowalska – rysunki, a także na cyklicznych wystawach,
które organizowane są na terenie całego kraju. Do tej pory odbyły się wystawy:
● Zamek Grodno w Wodzisławiu Śląskim, 24.09 - 31.12.2016,
● Wystawa z PZJ w Lesznie, 17 - 18.12.2016,
● MIEJSCE w Warszawie, 24.11 - 31.11.2016,
● UWM Olsztyn, 17.01 - 24.02.2017,
● IV Festiwal Sztuki Jeździeckiej w Warszawie, 02.04.2017,
● Politechnika Opolska, 07.04 - 09-05.2017,
● WBP w Kielcach, 22.05 - 16.06.2017,
● MBP w Kędzierzynie-Koźlu, 16.10 - 16.11.2017
● Galeria Stary Ratusz w Olsztynie, 26.01 - 08.02.2018
● V Festiwal Sztuki Jeździeckiej w Warszawie, 25.03.2018
● Pokaz prac u JKW Khaleda bin Sultana bin Abdul Aziza Al Sauda - 2018
● Ekspozycja na Krakowskim Pokazie Koni Arabskich - 2018
● Malują, rysują, rzeźbią KONIE -wystawa Grupy Artystycznej EE, Warszawa- 01.03 -
14.04.2019
● Malują, rysują, rzeźbią KONIE -wystawa Grupy Artystycznej EE, Olsztyn - 10.05 -
15.06.2019
● Wystawa rzeźby i rysunku w Galerii Cavaletto w Karpaczu (wspólna z Ewą
Jaworską), 10.08 - 15.09.2019
● Z siodła jest bliżej do nieba - Galeria Stary Ratusz w Olsztynie, 22.07 - 04.08.2021
● W galopie - zbiorowa wystawa przedaukcyjna na Torze Wyścigów Konnych na
Służewcu - wrzesień 2021