When you choose to make somewhere your home, your relationship with it takes on extra depth. Which is apt for the extraordinarily talented printmaker Aga Kubish, whose creative practice is wrapped up in exploring texture and detail. The Polish-born artist and her husband had long dreamed of exploring the British landscape, sentimentally watching episodes of Escape to the Country on TV in their native country. In 2018 she and her family ‘sold everything’ and took a chance on a move to the UK, landing first in Nailsea before adopting Weston-super-Mare as their base. Aga takes inspiration from the natural world to inform her linocut prints which study botanic motifs. It may be a coincidence, but the establishing of roots and generating fresh shoots in a new place has a warming synergy with the focus on plants in her artwork.
Listening to Aga talk animatedly about her exploratory walks, which she says help her balance family life with her artistic passions, reveal just how much she enjoys her surroundings. She is often found with a camera in hand capturing intricacies in the flora she encounters to reference back to in her home studio.
In quick succession, and with very little prompt, she eulogies about the sound of the waves hitting the shingle beach at Porlock, her love of walking in the Quantock Hills (the basis of her piece The Forest) and the positive energy of Wells and its cathedral. Her infectious joy in the county in which she lives is echoed back. Her work is on permanent display at Heart of the Tribe gallery in Glastonbury where she has also held solo and group exhibitions. ‘Inspiriting, absolutely breathtaking and amazing skill’ was one visitor’s response to her live demonstration at the venue.
For all her success – Aga was accepted as a member of the Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers in 2022 and awarded the Canns Down Press Prize for Panoramix in 2023 – and dedication to her practice, Aga is incredibly modest. She makes art simply because it’s part of her daily way of being in the world and connects her to it. ‘It was my complex that I hadn’t attended art school, so it was an important moment when I delivered my portfolio to the Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers at the Bankside Gallery,’ she explains. ‘It was life changing when I heard I was accepted.’
Heart of the Tribe gallery describes Aga as ‘incredibly prolific’ and it’s an accurate reflection. She produces her limited-edition large-scale linocut prints on nearly a monthly basis, actively seeking out stimuli to spur her to extend her body of work and develop as an artist.
Watching her unveil her artwork, Roots is a delight and privilege, a magical moment of reveal where the viewer joins the artist in seeing the impression of the cut lino and ink on paper for the first time, recognising the way it creates a mirror image of the original design. ‘With lino printing you have to think about a complex project at the beginning,’ she reveals. ‘It’s not like painting, if you make a mistake there’s no way to fix it.’ This is part of the enjoyment and challenge for Aga, who finds the act of cutting lino ‘like therapy, a mantra’.
Being connected physically to her work is important to Aga. She applies pressure by hand to transfer ink to paper, variously using glass jars or lids, allowing her to bring out subtleties of tone in her monochromatic work. ‘I love this handmade approach, it’s a lot of fun and I’m in control of the process.’
Aga works in one layer and one colour of ink on large paper, keeping her technique as simple as possible to allow for a deep dive into the minutiae of her subject matter, the repetition and variety in form of leaves and petals. This is played out beautifully in her interpretations of the Palm House at Kew Garden and artwork, Ferns.
The resulting pieces are timeless and elegant and as suitable for a country house or a Victorian terrace. She is conscious of how art fits into the interior aesthetic of a home and of how her prints, typically 1m by 70cm in size, are appealing for customers as much as they are rewarding to work on.
Deeply committed to her craft, Aga isn’t immune to feelings of sadness when completing a run of prints (she typically produces 50 with a handful of additional artists proofs) but lacks no impetus to begin new projects. ‘I need to produce art every day, it’s natural to me,’ she reveals, using her available time ‘200 per cent to be creative’.Her involvement with the Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers brings extra rigour and focus to her compulsion to make art and she hopes to join her fellow members for the annual summer exhibition at its home next to the Tate Modern in London.
‘I’m quite a shy person,’ she admits, ‘I prefer to speak via my work’. Luckily for Aga, her prints speak for themselves, loudly, effortlessly creating a 3D feel that give credit to the painstaking effort that goes into each composition and eliciting the urge to own not just one, but several.
There is a warm, bordering on impish, quality to Aga and perhaps her only reticence is to reveal the type of paper that she uses. ‘It’s a secret!’ she laughs. When giving so much of herself in her artwork, and offering such a compelling window into the British countryside, it’s only fair to afford her a few mysteries.
seanestart.square.site
@agakubish
