are drawn from the subjects of mythology and drama. Gargulinska's powerful use of colour and form symbolically represents the tragic and timeless history of human relationships. Mysteries Royal National Theatre, 2004 The Irish poet Seamus Heaney, with his Polish friend Stanislaw Baranczak recently translated a book of ‘Laments’ by the Renaissance Polish poet Jan Kochanowski. These beautiful, passionate outpourings of grief on the death of his two-year-old daughter are a perfect expression of that Polish intensity of feeling which surfaces in Ewa Gargulinska's dark, brooding paintings. Her consistent colour range of deep blue, red, purple, offset by occasional outbursts of acid yellow, explores a world of melancholy and sorrow, the ‘haunts of pain’ of the poets mourning. But the active surface of the paintings nevertheless bespeaks the living rather than the dead. The compassionate presence of the guardian spirit wards off ‘the eternal iron slumbers’ of despair, by the power of art ‘to purge our human thought of all its dread’, ‘where angels dwell beyond distress and fear.’ The dream like mood of her dark painting form this era brings to mind the Romantic Movement in art of 1800 with its surreal mysticism, reflection upon life, death and the unconscious. The poetic expression of the artist's inner world collides and fuses with reality, thus it represents the duality of existence by contrast of the abstract and figurative forms of expression. “I use metaphors and mythology to express emotional, spiritual and metaphysical states of mind, relating to my experiences of life's mysteries. I draw images from both my imagination and collective symbolism, pondering how spirit animates matter and how it leaves the body.” The Dilemma of Three Beijing Exhibition, 2010 Gargulinska focuses on the complexity and dynamic of three; creating figurative yet elusive forms of intermingled heads or faces, each portraying a different emotional state, nature and tension. All three are interdependent but connected, some faces dissolve into one another, overlapping in an immaterial or static space. The range of colour is subdued and subtle. Gargulinska uses muted yellows, brown-greens, and grey-blues in many translucent layers. The paintings in this series reflect upon the experience of the individual, the selves one carries within or the drama shared by three personas. “During my life and career as an exhibiting artist I have changed my modes of expression many times from figurative to abstract, from dark, obscure, ephemeral, reflective painting to passionate free