Nicola Dobrowolski

“Working with paper came so naturally to me,” says Nicola Dobrowolski. When she looks at a piece of paper it’s never a flat piece of paper that she sees. It’s an opportunity. It’s the beginning of something wonderful. Nicola has been collecting paper from a young age. Respecting and valuing good paper is clearly something that has been passed down through the generations within her family, from her grandfather, a Polish artist who worked with paper in a sculptural form in the advertising industry, to her mother, and then herself. Nicola learnt the wonderful skill of model making during her training as a Theatre Designer. “This is where I was introduced to my scalpel,” she recalls. “The possibilities of paper in both its 2D and 3D form truly became apparent to me there.”

Nicola Dobrowolski recalls once being described as a 2.5-dimensional paper artist: not quite 2D, but not 3D either, and she truly relates to this description. Making these 2.5-dimensional artworks either in a box frame or in a cloche means that she can create wonderful depth of field. She can light them from within and cast beautiful shadows. They are mini stages, on which stories can exist. She specialises in storytelling through her intricate paper creations, merging multiple stories into one visual whole, and creating artworks that exist in a glass dome cloche. Many of her works represent an interaction between humans and nature.

Nicola Dobrowolski’s first work, which took her down the route of creating in the round, was a wedding gift for her best friend. Her friend is obsessed with cheese and, not having much money at the time, Nicola bought her a cheese dish with a glass lid from an antique shop as a wedding gift. It seemed perfect at the time, but when Nicola got it home, she thought that it really was just a cheese dish! So, she decided to create a paper artwork in the round, depicting the couple's wedding day, the moment they turned to the world and declared themselves husband and wife. Nicola has come a long way since then, but it was a brilliant and heartfelt place from which to start her journey.

Magnae Chartae Exhibition