My paintings examine how memory shapes identity and our sense of belonging.

Working primarily in oil on canvas and linen, I begin with family photographs, images I have taken, remembered places, and observed encounters. Through layering, wiping back, and repainting, I allow the source image to move away from documentation. A portrait may become a site of memory; a landscape may hold traces of absence, attachment, or return.

Based in Glasgow and shaped by my experience of living between Poland and Scotland, my practice explores personal and inherited histories, migration, motherhood, and our relationship to place. Figures often resist a fixed identity, appearing instead as carriers of memory and lived experience.

Through gesture, light, and the material surface of paint, I create images in which the personal can meet something shared. The paintings ask for sustained looking, allowing their meaning to unfold gradually rather than revealing a single narrative.

Current Collections

1 4
Person standing in a forest with trees and sky in the background

Journal

Alongside my paintings, this journal gathers essays and reflections on the experiences, memories and questions that shape my work.

Some begin in the studio; others emerge from conversations, reading, travel or everyday life. Together, they offer a closer view of my practice and the connections I continue to find between painting, memory, family and place.

I am glad you found your way here.

— Paulina

Read Here

A Note from the Studio

  • Painting is often a slow conversation.

    Some images remain with me for years before finding their final form; others arrive unexpectedly and reveal themselves more quickly.

    What connects them is a desire to hold something that might otherwise pass unnoticed.

    This atelier is an extension of my studio—a place where paintings, collections and reflections can be encountered together.

  • Thank you for spending time here.

    I invite you to discover the works and continue their stories through the journal.

    If you would like to ask about a painting, an exhibition, or my practice, please get in touch.

    I read every message personally and am always glad to hear from those who connect with my work.

  • Artist Paulina Pawlik painting on an easel in a room with various items on the wall.

    Paulina Pawlik's Atelier


    Paulina Pawlik is a Polish-born painter based in Glasgow, Scotland. Working primarily in oil, she draws on photographs, personal histories, and remembered places to consider how memory is carried through the body and landscape.