Karolina Jabłońska Self-portrait with a puddle, 2024

This large-scale work by Karolina Jabłońska belongs to her series of paintings featuring a generalized self-portrait with identifiable characteristics including a captivating facial expression, large brown eyes, and prominent bushy eyebrows.

Presenting Jabłońska’s unique figurative style, the work depicts a figure resting her head on the ground, her portrait reflected in the puddle in front. Raindrops descend onto the figure, drenching her face, with strands of hair becoming entwined in the grass. Employing a distinct blue purplish palette, Jabłońska’s figure, whose eyes are ringed with purple circles, seems to be experiencing intense cold, yet at the same time appears to be unaffected by it.

Images of her figures in unpleasant weather often suggest analogies between weather conditions and mental and physical states. Appearing as desolate landscapes, in turn drenched, muddy or icy, these outdoor scenes emerge as sites for exploring personal feelings, all the while fully aware of the deceptive straightforwardness of such analogy —and wittily embracing the long history of landscape motifs as atmospheric markers.