Art Studio Pili

About Irena Kuzma

Irena Kuzma smiling among pink roses in a garden

I paint intuitively, with no sketches and no composition planned in advance.

Irena Kuzma is a self-taught abstract painter who lives and works in Bled, Slovenia. Before painting, she was a Supreme State Prosecutor in Slovenia, a career shaped by precision, responsibility and clear structure.

She began to paint seriously during the Covid pandemic, when she started to make space for herself. From the start, painting was the opposite of that world: a space of freedom, led by intuition and spontaneity, with no plan made in advance.

She works in mixed media on large canvases, combining acrylic, spray paint and oil pastel. Her work is known for layered textures, cracks and fractures, and earthy tones. In her newer paintings, cooler blues and greens join them, inspired by water and ice.

The white fractures that cross the surface of her paintings have become her signature.

Landscape

Earth, stone, forest, water and ice.

Intuition

No sketches and no plan made in advance.

Fractures

Lines that reveal what lies beneath.

Layers

Painted, scratched, uncovered and covered again.

Artist statement

Every painting grows in layers

I paint intuitively, with no sketches and no fixed composition. Each work grows in layers: I apply paint, scratch it back, uncover and cover again. The process is physical, direct and unpredictable, like the geological forces that shape a landscape over time: pressure, cracks, erosion and settling.

I often return to the crack, a line that cuts through the surface and reveals what lies beneath. For me it stands for my own path: a long time when my creativity grew in silence, under the surface, until it was ready to break through.

My colours come from the landscape I live in: earth, stone and forest, and in newer works water and ice. I do not paint real places. I paint the feeling of a space: its weight, its depth, and the light that comes through the layers.

Irena dragging a wide brush across a canvas Close-up of textured green and gold paint
This is my first public step into a new chapter of life. One period is closing, and another, which grew for a long time in silence, is finally becoming visible.
Pili