Artwork description: I perceive duck as a symbol of calmness, ordinariness, and everyday life. It evokes familiar and pleasant images of childhood and nostalgia. In a new, bustling city, it reminds me of the quiet certainties of home. It becomes a bearer of memories, a living symbol of “something known” in an unfamiliar environment. One could speak of a partial anonymity of space in its presence. In the park, by the water, among people (often unnoticed), it embodies the everyday, a return to simplicity, a search for a slow, even waddling pace and presence in the chaos of the unknown. In my work, the duck is stripped of its familiar silhouette – turned upside down, falling, almost out of control. Its body becomes an axis of gravity. However, the downward flight is not destructive but poetically heavy: it reflects the inevitable weight of existence, an encounter with the horizon (of water), where everything must slow down, settle, transform. The essence of my work lies in personal technological development and experimentation with a new medium. I approached painting on glass as a series of explorations using kiln-fired glass paints. Each painting reflects a different approach to technological glass painting. I chose methods of application that either defy or emphasize the rules and certainties of the medium. I’m fascinated by how paint and its combinations of colors behave in a single gesture. Technically, each layer should be fired separately, but I’m interested in what kind of mark is left, when painting directly into unfired. The second layer of the work is photographic – an area I had not previously explored before. I experiment with light-sensitive layers on photographic paper, either by painting with a brush or working in solid form, a hardened plaster. I also created photograms, which I made from painted glass. I was intrigued by the tension between painted and untouched surfaces – between what holds the light back and what allows it to pass freely. The photographs were created without using a camera – only through the direct action of light.