Peony garden

The painting “Peony Garden” by Magdalena Nowatkowska, from the cycle “Limits,” combines the subtlety of color with the architectural precision of form.

The title suggests something organic, alive—a garden with peonies, flowers that symbolize delicacy, sensuality, but also transience. Yet the artist does not depict the garden literally. Instead, she works with abstract human-like forms: rectangles, rounded lines, enclosed color fields. Set within a pastel, peony-toned frame, the viewer is presented with a painting that evokes the idea of a garden rather than illustrating it. It is more an emotional map of memory than a realistic scene.

The work speaks of an attempt to capture something fleeting, to enclose feelings or memories within a system that provides safety.

Its color palette creates an atmosphere of intimacy and calm, but also nostalgia. Pink and beige tones, intersected by white lines, generate a collision between warmth and cool order.

As a result, “Peony Garden” becomes an emotional diagram—a space of memory that cannot be fully expressed in words, but can be felt.