In a city teeming with bold strokes and louder voices, Kasia Muzyka chooses stillness. Her work doesn’t shout—it whispers with earth pigments, wine, and memory-infused waters. Deeply informed by her Polish roots and an intuitive creative process, she paints as if guided by something ancient and unseen. As her new series The Sacred Condition of Being opens, we caught up with Kasia Muzyka to talk about surrender, material intelligence, and the art of listening.
How has your Polish heritage influenced your work or worldview?
Growing up in Poland during a time of profound political tension—my father in opposition to the communist regime—I was shaped by an atmosphere of uncertainty. Life demanded constant alertness. I learned to read the room before I entered it, to sense shifts in energy before a single word was spoken. What began as a survival instinct gradually became something deeper: a way of attuning myself to what cannot be seen, only felt.
Over time, this sensitivity evolved into a dialogue with the invisible structures of existence. It’s how I began to connect with the unspoken, the mystical, the energetic. My Polish roots—steeped in resilience, intuition, and an enduring inner strength—taught me not just how to endure, but how to perceive beyond the surface. How to uncover meaning in silence, and truth in what remains unseen.
Listening before acting—once a necessary survival tool—eventually became the foundation of my artistic practice.
How do natural materials influence your choice of color and form?
Natural materials are not just mediums—they are collaborators. I work with wine, coffee, earth pigments, essential oils, and waters infused with memory. These substances carry their own intelligence, their own histories and frequencies. I don’t impose form on them; I listen.
Color isn’t selected—it emerges. Form isn’t constructed—it reveals itself. There’s a surrender in this way of working, a trust that what needs to come through will find its shape. These materials remind me that creation isn’t an act of control, but of partnership. They invite me to respond, not dictate—to engage in conversation with matter itself.
Working with the rawness of nature brings me closer to what is essential. There is beauty in imperfection, depth in unpredictability, and an ancient wisdom that rises through the cracks. That’s what I try to honor in each piece.
You often say that painting happens through you. What does that process of surrender look like?
That’s exactly how it feels—painting happens through me, not from me. I’m more guided than I am in control. If I tried to create from concept or logic alone—if I had planned my entire upcoming exhibition solely in my mind—it wouldn’t have unfolded the way it did. There is a larger intelligence at work, something I can feel but not command.
Surrender means listening more than deciding. It means entering the studio without a fixed plan, open to whatever wants to emerge. Often, I don’t even know what I’m painting until the very end. It can be uncomfortable and deeply vulnerable—there’s no map—but there’s also a certain magic in that. When I surrender, the painting becomes a teacher. It reveals something I didn’t know I needed to remember. It becomes a mirror, a guide—a conversation with the unseen. That’s where real art lives.
What does the title The Sacred Condition of Being mean to you personally?
For me, The Sacred Condition of Being is both a revelation and a remembering. It speaks to the truth that existence itself—raw, vulnerable, ever-changing—is holy. Not because it’s polished or resolved, but because it’s real. It holds joy and heartbreak, stillness and transformation, all at once.
On a deeper level, it’s about the sacred interconnectedness of everything. There’s a living intelligence—a kind of code of becoming—that pulses through all things, from spiraling galaxies to a breath, a tear, or a single drop of pigment on canvas. We are not separate from that current. We are that current.
This title didn’t come from an idea—it came from experience. Through painting, I’ve come to understand that the human experience is not something to fix or transcend, but something to honor. There is divinity even in doubt. When we surrender into the truth of simply being, we align with the rhythm, the pattern, the unseen architecture that holds it all.
What’s one thing you’ve learned from this body of work that surprised you?
What surprised me most was the depth of knowing that I am simply an instrument—an instrument through which something greater can move, speak, and create. When I surrender control and allow that force to guide me, a secret order begins to reveal itself. It’s not chaotic. It’s not random. It’s like a piece of music already written into the fabric of existence, waiting to be played.
But when I try to control it—when I push, force, or overthink—it becomes a struggle. I end up fighting myself.
This body of work taught me that surrender isn’t passive—it’s the most powerful form of collaboration. And what emerged in the end—this clarity, this resonance—I could never have planned from the beginning. As Rumi said, “As you start to walk on the way, the way appears. Clarity doesn’t come before the leap. It finds you only when you move, or after you’ve let go.