Cutout

A modernised but strongly based on traditional patterns (see E/433/ML), Lubelska's cut-out is made by Anna Słabczyńska from Lublin (born in 1959). In her childhood, which she spent in the village of Płouszowice Kolonia near Lublin, she watched her grandmother, Marianna Kuwałek, cutting out openwork paper forms. Today, in her works she often uses her grandmother's preserved collection of "frayed shapes".

She cuts them out with ordinary tailor's scissors without any sketches or templates. She draws her ideas from the surrounding natural world, as most papercutters do (see E/16193/ML). Among her works you can find those with a striped layout with stylized representations of trees, birds and animals: sparrows, geese, quail, storks, hens, hares, and human figures - women with water carriers or butter churns for beating butter. The stork motif dominates in vertical cut-outs, the so-called trees, made by folding a rectangular piece of paper once. Alongside angels, female figures, stylised leaves and peacock eyes, it also appears in multi-axis cut-outs (with four or eight axes) in the shape of a circle, rosette, square or star (see E/17672/ML). Their pattern is additionally created by various types of notches in the shape of eyes, serrations, arrows, composed in a repeated symmetrical pattern, and serrated edges. The artist makes them from glancing paper in one colour: yellow, orange, red, pink, violet, blue, green, brown, black, gold.

The artist has won many awards in paper-cutting competitions. Her works, which are in the collections of several Polish museums, are presented at temporary exhibitions. The National Museum in Lublin has one hundred and fifteen of them. Słabczyńska is also interested in nature photography and folk poetry - in short poems she describes folk rites and customs. She is a member of the Association of Folk Artists.