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[…] There is a certain ambiguity in Kawiorska’s painting, which is a result of a complex and long process of form sublimation. The artist does not take an easy path. Her method is perfect, finished to the limit. Kawiorska paints on canvas in oil technique with the use of glazing, i.e. thin, half-transparent layers of paint, which permeate each other giving the effect of varied, multi-dimentional color. Who paints like that today? This is the school of old masters. […] Kawiorska idealizes the form. She reaches the effect of dispersion of the painting matter, which was dreamed about by the Symbolists of the 19th and 20th century. They set the bar very high with their radical expectations towards arts. One of their postulates to ‘erase form’ (‘effacer la forme’) was connected with the aspiration to create a universal language, which would break away from reality and be transparent for ideas. That was one step away from abstract painting. 

Kawiorska seems to repeat this path from reality to abstraction. One may realize this fully by the fact that she almost always begins with specific motives found in everyday surroundings. Her eye has a tendency towards abstraction, that is why she notices and chooses images close to abstraction.[…] She is fascinated by building new relations between space, color and light. Her perfectly controlled chemistry of painting allows her to create geometrical structures transformed by the inner light. The artist confronts sharp and smooth structures with the bickering parts. She is not afraid of optical delusion, which give the effect of pulsation to the form.

[…] The chromatic harmonies built by Kawiorska have both sensual and symbolic dimension. The artist searching for the light in this hard time – has it ever been easy? – does not escape from references to spirituality.[…] 

Anna Baranowa, ‘Light in the Dark’, in: ‘Marta Kawiorska. Dark Land, Bright Light’, exhibition catalogue, 2022

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Marta Kawiorska’s painting is characterized by extraordinary care for the formal quality. Deep contouring, extraordinarily subtle use of colour value, translucent application of tones – these are characteristics rarely encountered today in the practice of young artists. Subtlety of colour – usually making use of a consciously narrowed colour range with a broad scale of half-tones – is indeed a calling-card of her canvases, as is thorough analysis of light phenomena revealed often in the simplest of motifs. […] What is striking, above all, is the purposeful rejection of textural effects, care to conceal mechanical traces of painting technique, purposeful choice of formats – as a rule, avoiding monumental dimensions.

Thus-defined technique leads to the achievement of surprising visual effects, the result of which is a peculiar sort of intimacy in the paintings that brings to mind associations with the 15th- century Dutch masters. Focused attention separates out individual objects, alienates them from their surroundings, displaying a refined play of lights and shadows. One’s thoughts follow one’s eye, posing questions about the identity of individual beings, their nature and the reality in which they exist. Essentially, this question is also posed with reference to the status of the viewer. The existence of the subject and object mutually conditions the possibility of recognizing their proper place in the hierarchy of phenomena and beings. […]

Here, the complexity of visual and compositional effects fully satisfies the need for an expression, whose enormous potential is hidden in the subtle value and colour ranges of the individual canvases. The formal refinement of these paintings is, however, not an empty display of technical virtuosity. A decidedly greater role in them is played by a subtle narrative, a ‘dialogue withthe object’, the content of which is the irremovable question of the possibility of knowing the world in which we live. […]

Ewa Herniczek, ‘Ray of Light Reflected’, in: ‘Marta Kawiorska, Dariusz Milczarek. Dialogue’, exhibition catalogue, 2019

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