creativity – Mitchell Pluto

In my figurative art, I don’t see the figure as something to be copied but as an event that’s shaped by rhythm, gesture and emotion. I grew up close to nature and think of my painted and drawn lines as threads and fibres, veins and roots, feeding and defining the boundaries of colours, which are the
emotions describing an inner life, memories and connections.

Each painting can be thought of almost like a conversation. As I work on a piece, whilst I usually have an overall concept that I’d like to express, the details and the manner in which that idea is expressed is often only discovered whilst I’m actually working on it. Some pieces end up looking
more like physical time-lapses, with the figures moving on the canvas as they get painted then repainted, whilst others could be seen as long-exposure captures of emotional changes, with the shifting colours both mirroring and guiding my mood whilst I work.

Magdalena studied Artistic Textiles at the C.K. Norwid Art College in Lublin, Poland and earned her master’s degree in Painting from the nearby M.C. Skłodowska University. After living and exhibiting in England and Switzerland, she settled in Asturias in northern Spain, where she
continues to develop her work. She has held numerous solo exhibitions and included in group exhibitions worldwide. Her work is represented by several international galleries and is held in collections around the world.

Written by ©Magdalena Morey

Website www.magdalenamorey.com
Instagram www.instagram.com/magdalena.morey.artist
Facebook www.facebook.com/MagdalenaMoreyArt

Ancestor, February 2024. Cardboard, feathers and found materials.

We live inside a culture whose overriding goal is to keep us distracted, afraid, addicted and constantly triggered and disconnected from our authentic selves.

Snakes, ladders and chaos Tim White August 2025. Acrylic paint, oil pastel and paint marker on industrial paper

Art is an antidote, a map guiding us to an authentic lived experiences and a life-affirming revolutionary principle.

John Trudell, North American Indigenous activist, declared, ‘When one lives in a society where people can no longer rely on the institutions to tell them the truth, the truth must come from culture and art’. In this context, of what therapist and medical doctor, Gabor Maté calls a ‘toxic culture’ the need for truth is critical and urgent.

The idea that art and poetry, and all the rich diverse forms of expression which connect us to each other can immunize us against the malignant virus of colonialism, capitalism and patriarchy is deeply appealing. That this wisdom comes from the deep spring of Indigenous knowledge and resistance, and despite the ongoing depredations of colonialism, is compelling.

The broken bits of the world I collect and use: the scraps of paper, plastic and metal, the discarded and rejected materials are clues and tools helping me puzzle my way out of the colonial-capitalist labyrinth. They are medicines too, the materia of transmutation, which once distilled provide essential healing and deepened connection with the biosphere and all it nurtures.

As African American feminist bell hooks writes, ‘The moment we choose to love we begin to move against oppression’. This process of resistance, of healing through love, is an essential part of overthrowing the dismal and diminished life the masters of misery want to force on us. And it is from this love, from the sources within our imagination and in solidarity with others we can assemble a ‘new world inside the shell of the old’.

For me, the found and discarded objects and materials used in my art carry a promise and reminder of profound possibilities subsumed in everyday life beyond the superficial substitutions of a hollowed-out AI virtuality. That even everyday junk and detritus call out to be up-cycled and politicised demanding a place as emblems of a transformed future, and are always on hand as building blocks for a new world, is a source of joy and inspiration.

Tag Archives: creativity

Figurative Conversations by Magdalena Morey

Maps of Transformation by Tim White