Artist’s Profile

Mishka Borowski paints light in all its pure brilliance, the play between the known and the indescribable, white light and hot heat. Meticulously applied layers of oil paint and glazes create lush, vibrant scenes capturing the moment of epiphany in an otherwise ordinary day. Borowski’s paintings strike a balance between hyper reality and abstraction, the saturated light and colour often blazing into abstraction giving the paintings an otherworldliness and a connection to the spiritual.

Earlier paintings were classic still life’s, cheese, saucisse, half full glasses of champagne, sparkling in the Parisian sun. Others dreamy night moments, twisted and blurred, a tableaux of the detritus of a long evening recently deserted.

Most recently Borowski has painted children’s toys as they have been placed in a complex and meaningful series of “games”, in which the toys become animated and their relationships are all important yet intangible. The mass produced plastic toys transform into engaging protagonists involved in the mysterious pursuits of an unknown nature. Not nostalgic, but disturbingly familiar, these are the transient moments that pass in the blinking of an eye, awake but asleep, forever burned into ones consciousness.

Since graduating from Sydney Colllege of the Arts in 1990, Borowski has exhibited extensively throughout Australia and abroad including group shows at Kunst Acadamia Wien Gallery in Vienna, Kampnagel Gallery in Hamburg and the MCA in Sydney. She has been a finalist in a number of Art Prizes, including a Highly Commended award in the 2009 Belingen Art Prize and her work is held in many private collections.