Justyna Dawidowicz is a contemporary landscape and figurative artist currently based in Ottawa, Canada. After leaving her native Poland in 1994, Justyna moved to Montreal where she obtained a bachelor in Fine Arts at Concordia University, specializing in Painting and Drawing. She exhibited in Montreal galleries such as Belgo, Art Mur and VAV gallery. In 2013 Justyna moved to Brooklyn, New York where she developed her series, Fragmented Landscapes, at a Brooklyn Navy Yard studio. This series was a move away from realism towards more abstract and process based work and the series was honoured with the Best Regional Artist Award from the Ottawa Art Gallery in 2017.Aside from working on her own art, Justyna has been spreading the love of art-making in diverse healthcare settings. Between 2008 and 2013, Justyna worked at the Douglas Mental Health University Institute, engaging people in art and curating patient art exhibitions. Here Justyna became inspired by Outsider Art and developed an interest in process-based art-making. From 2014-2016 Justyna worked as an Artist in Residence at an oncology unit at the Mount Sinai West Hospital in New York. This body of work is inspired by the natural world and the ecological threats it is facing. Exploring the relationship between man and nature, this work depicts the tension between human efforts to tame and control nature and nature’s persistent regeneration to reclaim its territory. The free-flowing ink forms represent the organic world contrasted against the symmetric and sharp-edged man-made shapes.
