The paint ran down her hands – blue, orange, a touch of red. Karolina Zielińska stood on scaffolding five stories high, a brush in one hand, a cup of coffee in the other. Before her – a blank, gray wall of an apartment block in Gdańsk’s Chełm district. In three weeks, it was to be a mural depicting a whale emerging from the ocean. For now, there was only a chalk sketch and a few initial brushstrokes.
“People think it’s easy,” Karolina says, putting down her coffee and getting to work. “That you grab a spray can, spray it, and it’s done. But murals aren’t tunnel graffiti. They are stories. And each one must mean more than just colors.”
It is September 2024, a light breeze carries the scent of the sea. Karolina has been working here for a week. Every day from dawn till dusk. Alone. Without assistants, without a crew. Just her, the paints, and the wall.
The Girl Who Wanted to Be a Doctor
Karolina is thirty-one years old. She studied medicine at the University of Gdańsk. She was supposed to be a cardiologist. Her parents, both doctors, were proud. Their daughter continuing the family tradition. But after her third year, Karolina dropped out. She told her parents she couldn’t bear to see suffering, that medicine suffocated her, that she couldn’t sleep after shifts.
The truth was different. She had simply discovered painting.
“I didn’t tell them right away,” she admits, mixing paint. “For a year, I pretended I was still studying. I’d leave home in the morning, go to the studio, paint until evening. I’d come back and say I’d been at classes. My mother found out a year later when she saw my mural in the housing estate. She didn’t speak to me for six months.”
Today it’s different. Her mother sometimes comes to watch Karolina work. She doesn’t say much, but it’s clear she’s proud. Her father still doesn’t understand. But he stopped asking, “When are you going back to school?”
First Mural on the Childhood Block
Karolina painted her first mural in 2019. On the wall of the block where she grew up – Chełm III, Kołobrzeska Street 34. It depicted a girl holding a suitcase and looking at the sky. It was black and white, stark, as if cut from a newspaper.
“That was me,” she says. “A girl who wanted to escape. But she didn’t know where.”
The mural caused quite a stir. Residents criticized it as ugly, sad, depressing. Someone spray-painted on it: “This isn’t art, it’s dirt.” Karolina cried for a week.
“I wanted to paint over it,” she recalls. “But a neighbor, Mrs. Basia, came to me. Eighty years old, living alone. She said the mural was beautiful. That she had felt that way once too. That sometimes art hurts because it’s real.”
Since then, Karolina has painted twenty murals in Gdańsk. Each tells a different story. Each is created with the people who live there in mind.
A Whale for Mrs. Ewa
Now she is painting a whale. Why a whale? Because Mrs. Ewa, a resident of the block, asked for it.
Mrs. Ewa is fifty-eight years old. She lives on the fourth floor with a view of the wall Karolina is now painting. All her life she dreamed of seeing a whale alive. She saved money for a trip to Norway, but her husband fell ill. Then her son lost his job. Then she herself had an accident. The money disappeared. The dream faded.
“When I heard there would be a mural here, I thought: maybe at least I’ll have it outside my window,” says Mrs. Ewa, standing on her balcony and watching Karolina work on the scaffolding. “I asked for a whale. And she agreed.”
Karolina smiles, hearing these words.
“That’s why I do it. Not for money, not for fame. I do it so someone can open their window in the morning and feel that the world can be more beautiful.”
Paint, Sweat, and Silence
Painting a mural is not a solitary job, even though Karolina works alone. Every now and then someone strikes up a conversation. Children come after school and ask, “What will it be?” Older ladies bring coffee and cookies. Young guys take photos for Instagram. This is her audience. Her museum.
“In an art gallery, people come, look for ten seconds, and leave,” she says, spreading blue paint on the whale’s tail. “Here, people live. They see it every day. My mural becomes part of their lives.”
But the work is hard. Her hands ache from holding the brush. Her back from standing. The sun burns, rain interrupts the painting. Sometimes paint drips from the scaffolding onto someone’s window. Sometimes the city sends an inspection to check if she has a permit.
“Once the police came,” Karolina laughs. “Someone reported that I was vandalizing public property. We had to explain that it was a commission from the housing association. But I understand. For some people, a mural is still vandalism.”
A Wall That Says “Thank You”
After three weeks, the mural is ready. The whale emerges from the ocean, majestic, enormous, blue as the sea. In the background, you can see the sky, clouds, seagulls. Mrs. Ewa cries on the balcony.
“This is the most beautiful thing anyone has ever done for me,” she says through tears.
Karolina descends from the scaffolding, dirty, tired, happy. People gather around the block, taking photos. Children clap. One of the neighbors brings champagne.
“To the whale!” he says, raising a plastic cup.
Karolina drinks, smiles. But she is already thinking about the next mural. Because she has a list of waiting commissions. Everyone wants something of their own on their wall. Their own whale. Their own dream.
“If someone had told me ten years ago that I would be painting whales for Mrs. Ewa in Gdańsk’s Chełm, I wouldn’t have believed them,” she says at the end. “But this is the best thing I’ve ever done. Because in medicine, I would save bodies. Here, I save dreams.”
And she walks towards the next block. With a brush in hand and paint on her clothes. Ready to paint another story.
