# sluczaj.com > artist and writer ## Posts - [grief marks - the coming together of an exhibition](https://sluczaj.com/grief-marks-the-coming-together-of-an-exhibition/): After an irreconcilable loss, you end up doing strange things. I found myself on hands and knees, making black ink marks on paper. Bones and bonfires, bonfires and bones. I also got the strong feeling that this was it now, I was going to have to be an artist. The process of mindlessly making ink lines was a process of survival, some part of me surviving that might otherwise have gone under. I don’t know exactly which part, because it’s still with me. The original bone-fire led to more, and then a year or so later into textured, endlessly layered […] - [elevating - the rules](https://sluczaj.com/elevating-the-rules/): i came up with some rules for painting, unearthed from what it is i actually do. they’re slightly different from the rules i shared in my recent newsletter. listen to the call of colours, speed, pressure and directions, the way you might listen to your environment, noises, shifting air pressure, light, if tracking an animal then obey the call, do not impose anything dance with your hands, also attack, smooth again, and attack, scrape, bang, follow the impulses until they stop make sure you catch the moment when they stop watch for the straightness demanded by a curve, and vice […] - [what's the point?](https://sluczaj.com/whats-the-point/): This is a question that comes up quite frequently in life as well as in art, and particularly in the kind of intuitive, abstract expressionism I engage in. Looking at the world as it is now, a place of wanton ecological destruction, genocide, absurd levels of inequality, in which leaders have lost any shred of morality and maybe the survival of humanity is actually at stake (could there be a more stupid idea than creating an entity more intelligent than oneself?) I think we could be forgiven for wondering what the point is in slinging some paint on canvas. It […] - [painting sticky feelings](https://sluczaj.com/painting-sticky-feelings/): This is a season when a cyclical grief comes around for me again, and the only thing it makes any sense to do when it strikes is to paint. I’ve run out of canvases and this has by now (it’s happened so often!) led to a new kind of signature painting – going over bright, calm paintings with big black movements, although the one above isn’t bright and calm but actually a sign I made to take to a protest. If I didn’t have a deposit sitting with the rental agency I would definitely be putting those black strokes and […] - [Art fairs and finding out what you mean](https://sluczaj.com/art-fairs-and-finding-out-what-you-mean/): Last weekend was the Parallax Art Fair at Chelsea Town Hall. I took along the second painting in my ‘Bones and Bonfires’ series, and had some enlightening conversations about it, during which I discovered for myself the response that comes when someone asks me what it ‘means’. My first natural response, is that there is no meaning separate from the work itself and there is no work itself without the viewer, so basically, if you need a meaning then it’ll be inside you, and if you don’t that’s just fine because the work is as it is. However, I decided […] - [when it all goes wrong - but how can it really go wrong?](https://sluczaj.com/when-it-all-goes-wrong-but-how-can-it-really-go-wrong/): This is the one that went wrong, oh so very wrong. It started out a minimalist, cool, matte black with a delicate wisp of red. Then the spray can broke, dumping an obscene amount of varnish in one spot of the painting, you know, the irredeemable one. I painted over one place and I painted over another, and the red wisp no longer looked wispy and before I knew it I was just going in with my hands, the only way I know how. Painting for me (apart from anomolies like the wispy one that nobody will ever see) is […] - [creativemess](https://sluczaj.com/hello-world/): there’s no such word really as creativeness – but there should be. even more so there should be the word creativemess. it’s something that is really good for the soul. there’s a place for the kind of creativity that follows a structure- the exquisite orders of nature, the construction of a snowflake, the rings inside a tree trunk, the petals of a flower and how they make perfect almost identical but never identical shapes. but where humans really come into their own is in their ability to make mess – to play, without aim or goal, in the place where […] ## Pages - [prints](https://sluczaj.com/prints/): A4 giclee prints, on hahnemuhle German etching paper, unframed, signed on the back. Other sizes available on request. You can order direct from me by writing me a message here, or click the order button, and I’ll post them to you. £35 each. - [diary](https://sluczaj.com/diary/) - [translations](https://sluczaj.com/translations/): my translations of Polish poets Halina Poswiatowska, Anna Swirszczynska, Ida Sieciechowicz and Grazyna Wojcieszko. and Ukrainian poet Yuri Andrukhoych, via the Polish translations by Bohdan Zadura, have appeared amongst other places in Modern Poetry in Translation, LA Review, lyric, Cider Press Review, zzywa, 3AM magazine, qarrtsiluni, Zyzzyva, and Zeitzug.com. Soundtrack Do Naglosnionych wnetrz/Amplified Insides – A Soundtrack (universitas, 2020 ) by Ida Sieciechowicz translated by Sarah Luczaj from ‘Songs for a Dead Rooster’ (unpub) by Yuri Andrukhovych, translated by Sarah Luczaj – published in 3AM Magazine Body Incision in Real TIme, by Ida Sieciechowicz translated by Sarah Luczaj (Wydawnictwo Ksiegarnia […] - [about](https://sluczaj.com/about/): sarah luczaj PhD, poet, writer and painter, is also a professional therapist (dip counse.BACP), reiki master and a literary translator. cofounder of the terrealuma healing refuge, inventor of the creative regeneration process, and mother of two daughters. she lives in glasgow, uk, and rural poland. @emmabrownphotography - [writing](https://sluczaj.com/writing/): insomniaas i rolled overmy mind flung up flowers Poems have appeared in Best American Poetry 2025, Action, Spectacle, The American Poetry Review, The New Statesman, AGNI online, OVS (who nominated my poem for a Pushcart prize), Cream City Review, Arsenic Lobster, LA Review, lyric, Cider Press Review, Natural Bridge, Atlanta Review, Pedestal Magazine, Chiron Review, yefief, Diner, Great River Review in the unlikely eventthe deep notes land like wind on seawhich is to say they don'tbecause water is not a landable placeeverything repeatseverything repeatsthe heart can rest on this - it does MY LIFE IS BRILLIANTNo one I lovehas died […] - [creative regeneration retreats](https://sluczaj.com/creative-regeneration-retreats/): creative regeneration next retreat will be in spring. creative regeneration is a process which brings together meditation, felt-sensing (based on gendlin’s focusing), free-writing and intuitive painting – the aim is to release the life-force and get back to your natural state of joy and power, not to bypass suffering but to be better equipped to act. basically i put together all the things that work for me! creative regeneration will be taking place in october in the red house – a gentle process aimed at restoring our life force together in a cosy environment around the woodstove. retreats run annually […] - [contact](https://sluczaj.com/contact/) - [originals](https://sluczaj.com/available/) - [art](https://sluczaj.com/art/): i am a self-taught artist, i paint with hands, brushes, grass, acrylics, oils, and always with the life-force come along to Parallax Art Fair, Chelsea Town Hall, London October 17-19th, to see some of my work in person, and maybe take some home… galaxy hatching scramble-cord - [art in homes](https://sluczaj.com/art-in-homes/): i’ll be at the Parallax Art Fair, Chelsea Town Hall, London, on October 17-19th, come along and see if you can find just the right splash of colour and energy you’re looking for in your home! I love the sweet, peaceful energy this painting brings to the room where I sleep, and I love that it’s there when I wake, a blessing of colour just over my head. Cecilia Woloch - [commissions](https://sluczaj.com/commissions/): whatever it is that you want to express, i can work with you to express it in a painting! to find out more about the process, feel free to inquire here and we can chat about it – no obligation. I have positioned ‘The Comet’ on the wall in my bedroom so that she’s the first thing I see waking up every morning. I love gazing into her depths, which I find simultaneously calming and inspiring, while I contemplate the day ahead. Too, I love allowing myself to become mesmerized by her shimmering light at mid-day, sitting at my writing […] - [sarah luczaj](https://sluczaj.com/): sarah luczaj artist and writer i paint with the life-force, and with my hands originals, prints and commissions are all available. images are upcoming from the Easter weekend Grief Marks exhibition at Salt Space gallery in Glasgow, and prints of the work shown are available for order now! Standing outside the insides birth and rebirth in fire, layers upon layers swirled fast with the fingers and scraped Ascension the binary sweeps upwards in darkness and the green cloud swirls, you can’t stop grass growing bonfires and bones, part I indian ink on paper, down on the floor, grief and transmutation. 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