Grażyna Ostrowska

August Diary: Fio de Luz

16 August 2026

Dear friends,

I am writing this from a garage in Poland.

My temporary studio, to be precise.

There are canvases leaning against the walls, brushes everywhere, small containers filled with paint, and a pinned-down collection of studies that keeps falling off the wall, taking bits of the wall paint with it.

For the past days, almost everything has been about
Fio de Luz.

Thread of Light.

The series began with something very simple: my fascination with light.

At the end of July, I spent a few days in the south of France with my daughter, on the Côte Bleue. It was interesting to see how differently the landscape speaks through light. More turquoise. More saturated colours. A different vibrancy altogether.
I loved the endless cicada noise around La Couronne. The feeling of the noon heat stretching endlessly into the afternoon.

It is never simply brightness.

It creates contrast. It divides a scene into light and dark, defines the rhythm of a landscape or a cityscape, creates tension between shapes.

This is where I start.

And then I look for colour and texture.

Acrylics, however, don’t give you much time to contemplate your discoveries.
They dry quickly.

If I want a soft edge, I need to work fast. Otherwise I have to build it through layers, using plenty of medium and returning to the surface again and again.
This has been particularly interesting for me because my current challenge is exactly the opposite of being careful.

I want to loosen up.
The first three larger paintings were almost finished.
Strong contrast, interesting shapes, a good structure.
And yet they felt stiff.

Too much order.
Not enough movement.
In the scene, in my brushstrokes.

So I started taking things apart again.

I am allowing myself to paint over, destroy, rework.
To make a mark that might be too much. To lose something that seemed “right” if it helps the painting breathe.

The small paintings are now beginning to interest me in a different way, too.

I am thinking of treating them as one continuous row, almost like an azulejo line, so that individual little scenes become part of a larger rhythm. And I think they are just prefect to be the surface for the calm evenings on Ilha de Faro.

Perhaps this is what it means to listen to a painting.
Not to insist on what I had originally planned, but to notice what begins to happen once the work is underway.

The more I do, the more I discover.

And the more I discover, the more I wish I had time to explore. Which brings me to a truth I have known for quite some time:

I need a permanent studio.

Not a garage borrowed for a few weeks. Not a temporary corner between two lives.
A place where paintings can stay unfinished.
Where I can leave something for tomorrow instead of having to put everything away.

Where an idea can take three weeks—or three months—if that is what it needs.