Isabelle Gotkiewicz is a French painter with Polish origins.
Her painting is defined as free representation, urban contemporary and raw modern art. Her painting techniques are mixed with oils. The paintings are mounted on frames or are squeegedon wood. Autodidact and passionate about her work, in 1993 she is discovered by a contemporary art expert Dominique Stal. Following this meeting, he auctioned her paintings in the auction rooms at the l’Hôtel Richelieu Drouot in Paris. Her paintings were exhibited in several galleries, in the Carrousel du Louvre, in New York in the Gershwin Gallery, and in Australia, Poland and Spain.
Her painting is explosive, full of energy, rage, control with bright joyful colours full of life. Her inspiration comes from music, jazz, pop, dance, from literature and from the people that she meets. It a new experience each time which enables her to throw herself into a different vision of her environment. Its during this period that she lived, exhibited and travelled across the USA. From 1998, she met and collaborated with several different artists such as Amy Ernst, Raphael Olbiniski, Jacob Fulsand Mikkelsen, Neke Carson who had previously worked with Andy Warhol, and Andrew Kastenmeier. Her contemporary urban paintings, with crossed out written words, the rough side of this art often makes one think of Jean Michel Basquiat.
Since her return from the USA in 2003, she lives in France. Her paintings are deeply inspired by her travels, and show the different lights and colours of the countries visited. Her work is based on the creation and the exchange between two people, meetings being her medium for inspiration, as well as major worldwide events. ‘I like to dig into what is the essence of the good and bad in each of us’ explains Isabelle Gotkiewicz. In her exhibitions, you can see tears and rips on her urban paintings, crossed out words and pieces of material, each painting has a story, it tells the story of the person she meets. ‘I can be given a piece of clothing, an object which then becomes the key element in the painting, you get rid of a burden, and of a story by the same occasion, as if making it transfer to the painting’ ‘I become their confident, and I rewrite their story and their emotions. The crossed out words are those that want to be ignored, but they are still present, crossing them out gives them their importance’’the rips and tears show the fractures of life’. The artist likes to recharge herself and leaves for wide open spaces like the deserts in Jordan, Nevada or Australia.
Isabelle Gotkiewicz paints her large scale paintings on the floor and she walks over them. She has several workshops which are rather unusual, it could be a garden, a tent in the middle of a deserted beach, a gallery, a house, ‘I like to be in contact with the natural elements, it gives me strength and inspiration’, there is a chamanic feel to the way she paints. Her interests run along parallel to her painting, she is interested in dreams, the divine, the fantasy world of children, the human condition, ADN, and Nature.