THE ARTIST
MAGDA MALAK
Magda Malak is a contemporary seascape artist based on the Dorset coast.
Working in oils, she explores the sea as both a physical presence and an emotional landscape—a place of immersion, movement, vulnerability and return.
The Sea as a Place of Return
The ocean has always been more than a subject to me. It is a place where the boundaries between the physical and emotional begin to dissolve.
I am drawn to the moment before a wave breaks, the movement of light beneath the surface, the vulnerability of being immersed in water and the quiet pull of a distant horizon. These experiences become the starting point for paintings that move between stillness and turbulence, clarity and surrender.
Rather than depicting a single coastline, I use the sea to explore atmosphere, memory and our instinctive relationship with the natural world. Some paintings appear to look across the water; others seem to place the viewer within it.
Each work is built slowly in oil through translucent layers, shifting colour and areas of both control and uncertainty. The painting develops through observation and memory, but also through the physical process of allowing paint to move, gather and change.
The result is not intended as a record of the sea as it appeared on a particular day. It is an attempt to hold something less tangible: the feeling of being drawn towards it, changed by it and continually called back.
About Magda
Magda Malak is a contemporary British artist creating atmospheric oil paintings inspired by the emotional and physical experience of the sea.
Based on the Dorset coast, she works between direct observation, memory and an intuitive painting process. Her work ranges from expansive horizons and shifting coastal light to more immersive perspectives beneath and within the waves.
Magda’s paintings have been collected throughout the UK, Ireland, Europe, the USA and Canada. Her work is presented through selected exhibitions, art fairs and galleries, alongside a developing programme of solo and group exhibitions.
“I do not paint the sea simply as it appears. I paint the experience of being drawn towards it, immersed within it and changed by it.”
- Magda Malak