Borucka has a lifelong interest in materiality and an experimental approach to painting underpinned by interests in land art, landscape, and natural phenomena In 2010, she moved her studio from London to the Greek islands – and the semi-arid Cyclades, make up a unique and fragile island ecosystem, a rich historical and social topos, which she calls home.
Discovering marble dust as painting material shortly after giving birth to her son, she seeks to draw directly from the land and the cycles of nature to make art which moves away from the human as the defining form of beauty.
Dr. Susanne Turner, Curator, Museum of Classical Archeology, Cambridge University
Since 2018, I started working with marble dust, creating works that draw directly from the land inviting nature, and topos onto my unprimed, raw linen canvases.
I source my marble dust either directly from the land where is deposited by local marble workshops or from the workshop of a local self-taught stonemason who has worked with marble his entire life. In the process, I also learn about Parian history from his perspective thus strengthening my relationship with the local landscape, τόπος (topos).
Paros Island has a long history regarding marble. The famously white and translucent lychnites marble was quarried on the island during antiquity and some of the greatest and timeless masterpieces of sculpture and architecture were carved from it. Nike of Samothrace, Hermes and the Infant Dionysus, Venus of Milos and the temple of Apollo at Delos to name a few.
Justyna Borucka 