Daria Zapala

Glasgow based artist Daria Zapala was born in Poland in 1981 in the South West, which may explain her thirst for travel and exhibiting in galleries worldwide. Since graduating from Institute of Fine Arts, University of Opole in 2005 she has exhibited in galleries in UK, USA, Poland, and Italy.

Zapala specializes in printmaking and graphic design. Her work portrays fairytale figures, dreaming girls, characters living in a fantasy world. Sometimes seen from a different perspective appear deformed, stretched by their compositional arrangement. Zapala concentrated from the beginning on the human figure; she deconstructs it by transferring a photograph she took beforehand onto the computer and entwining further artistic elements, patterns and characteristics. This leads her work to take on a dynamic, yet sometimes-abstract character. Passing lines, bright colors and rhythmic shapes, each work obeys to a movement. Inspired by Toulouse-Lautrec, Schiele, Modigliani or Byrne and the street art, Zapala combines the painting, collage, illustration or etching.

Zapala has currently come back from a year long around the world travel with new inspiration for her work entitled “Codac Series” which began during her voluntary work for USS Midway Museum in San Diego, USA. “Codac Series” in its final form will create a set of prints, paintings and murals.

Zapala quotes Albert Einstein: “Imagination is everything. It is preview of life’s coming attractions.”

She describes: “I‘m interested in the human body, it is a constant feature in my art.

I use my body as the primary vehicle of my work. In a way I do it, as a piece of material and manipulating it, I think of it as going into the studio and being involved in some activity of creation. Sometimes it works out that the activity involves making something, and sometimes the activity itself is the piece.”

 See more at: http://www.behance.net/dariazapala