She was born in 1950 in Krakow. She studied the Faculty of Architecture of the Krakow University of Technology and got her master’s degree at the Institute of Urban and Space Planning in 1975. In 1985 she was granted professional qualifications as painter by the Minister of Culture and Art.

I began painting while studying architecture urged by professor Krystyna Wróblewska who held the Chair of Freehand Drawing at the Faculty of Architecture of the University of Technology. Later, working as an academic teacher at the Faculty I had an opportunity of taking part in the painting workshops en plein air, which were bravely organised by Ewa Węcławowicz-Gyurkovich. It was a great experience. We took our children and dogs to lovely places, most often to Wola Zręczycka, and we painted and painted. These workshops were a turning point in my career. Landscape has become my inspiration. I was surrounded by open space, orchards in blossom, lots of colours. I painted my first oil painting during one of these trips. Although I have a highlander’s blood, I have never wanted to paint the mountains. The space of the mountains is a mere pretence. Expanse, colour, rhythm and balance, they all come from water and of meadows, meadows, meadows. It is a landscape formed, construed and organized by the nature itself. I never get tired of painting landscapes in their changeability obeying the colouring of the seasons, always finding something new. I paint en plein air, in my atelier, in my mind’s eye, everywhere. I have realized only recently that I have always perceived architecture as a part of landscape, atmosphere of the place and not as a separate entity. I have even written a poem about it and exhibited it together with my painting during one of the Biennale Architektury/ Biennal Exhibition of Architecture, thus pouring forth my thoughts. It is natural that with such an attitude I could only find satisfaction through painting, enjoying full independence. My problem was to find my own way but I was inspired by an exhibition of professor Maciejewski’s works at the Bunkier Sztuki Gallery. It was full of beautiful paintings depicting garlands, flowers and colours. It made me realize that I did not want an academic career but wanted to paint, to learn and to paint again. It must have been around 1987, and I have never looked back. I love the hustle of putting up my exhibitions and vernissages. I have taken part in several dozen of group and solo exhi bitions so far. They were organized in different places, some of them more, some less prestigious, even in private houses or gardens. The visitors are both my friends and the family but also strangers. I like meeting them, watching their faces. In this way I can share my vision of the world with other people. Some, professor Wróblewska for example, may regard it as exhibitionism. But what is the opinion of others? Let me quote some of my colleagues who deal with art. Their support and also the support of my husband and sons has been a real source of happiness for me over the years.

Let me thank them all for that.

Hanna Gąsienica-Samek
Krakow, June 2010

“Every painter imagining things has to be an architect, although not very architect has to be a painter. The reason for this is quite simple; architecture verges on metaphysics, whereas painting is metaphysics, as simple as that. My first impression looking at the paintings of Hanna Gąsienica-Samek is timbre, its intensity, warmth, and the richness of shades of red, yellow, brown. After a while I begin to realize that the artist graduated from architecture and I begin to wonder whether the arrangement of space is determined here by the architectural standards. It seems I am preconceived. To be honest, composition in Ms Hanna’s paintings is subdued by colour. The colours are so intensive that one may be led to think that the painter adds her own colourful commentary to nature (...)”

Jerzy Skrobot

“Architecture or the art of building” was the title given to his treatise by the learned Count Rev. Sebastian Sierakowski. Talent and genuine technical knowledge have always accompanied the most accomplished creators. They looked at the world with an artist’s eye, but built with sobriety and perfect attention to detail. And so does Hanka Gąsienica-Samek”.

T. Przemysław Szafer

“(...) There are also paintings resembling sketches, most fascinating of all, as if they were not finished or were frozen at the moment of creation, (...) as if the artist wanted to say that she has no time for detail, intentionally (or not) disclosing the fact of being an educated architect who first makes a sketch of a concept or design, capturing ideas in a firm, quick rhythm of lines and splashes which carry the basic message addressed at a spectator (...)”

Jacek Pencakowski

photo by Bartłomiej Kosman