Materia mystica. Próba introspekcji w kolorach złota i czerni* / Materia Mystica. An Introspection in Black and Gold

The article is an attempt to combine reflection on the mystical side of artistic activity with the author’s self-comment on her creative work in graphic art. The discourse shows multi-aspectual thoughts on the secret of the act of creation and the matter itself that serves art, based on the philosophical background of different religious, cultural and worldview traditions; it also touches upon the sphere of self-cognition, symbolism, and transcendence. The author’s narrative is accompanied by the thoughts of inter alia William Blake, Samuel Coleridge, Stanisław Fijałkowski, Hildegard of Bingen, Carl Gustav Jung, Kabir, Wassily Kandynsky, Paul Klee, Czesław Miłosz, Meister Eckhard, Rainer Maria Rilke, Andrzej Strumiłło, St. John of the Cross, and Zhuangzi. These considerations are combined with the analytical explication of the author’s selected works and with an attempt to introspectively look into herself. The author examines the following: understanding of the concept and phenomenon of matter (Materia - proch ziemi i kwantowa pustka [Matter - the Dust of Earth and Quantum Void]); mystical and spiritual aspects of art (Mistyka - ulotność wizji i realność duchowości [Mysticism - Transience of Vision and the Reality of the Spiritual]); the world (identified with the matter of creation) of inner experiences of her own artistic imagination (Materia tworzenia [Matter of Creation]); symbolic-formal features of her own graphic works (W granicach formy [Within the Form]); and the unfathomable problem of cognition and self-cognition through art (Laboratorium sztuki i sztuka przemiany [Laboratory of Art and the Art of Transformation]).