About Lucia
I create places to breathe – peaceful, surreal worlds of deep water, murmuring forests, and skies you can climb into. Drawing from the timeless wisdom of fairy tales, I treat these narratives not as an escape from reality, but as an invitation to personal transformation.
My process is a conversation with the viewer. I hide thoughts and concepts within the textures of poetic surrealism, and when a painting leaves my studio, the process runs in reverse: someone else unveils the surface, layer by layer, and finds beneath the gold and ink the unseen landscape of a psyche – often their own. Thus the canvas becomes a mirror you can dive into.
– Lucia Tužinská
In brief
Lucia Tužinská is a Slovak painter of poetic surrealism, working in acrylic, oil, ink and gold from her studio in Moravské Lieskové, in the foothills of the White Carpathians. Her paintings have been shown across Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Germany, Austria and Italy, and hang in private collections across Europe and the Americas.
Journey
Lucia’s first craft was words. Born in Bratislava, she trained in Translation and Interpreting at Comenius University’s Faculty of Arts and spent years translating books, film scripts, and television series.
She went on to become one of Slovakia’s earliest advocates for homeschooling – vice-chair of the Slovak Homeschooling Association and, with her family, a public face of the movement in national media.
Painting ran alongside all of it: ten years of study under Mgr. art. Soňa Herényiová-Belanová. In 2021 she gave herself to it fully – she still describes painting as a kind of translation. Curator PhDr. Ľuboslav Moza of the ARTEM gallery took notice that same year, beginning a collaboration that continues today, and in 2022 an international jury at the 24th Premio Internazionale d’Arte San Crispino in Italy awarded her the Special Jury Prize – the start of a growing exhibition record across Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Germany, Austria, and Italy.
Today Lucia lives with her husband and their four daughters in a straw-bale house in the White Carpathians, dividing her time between the countryside and her beloved Bratislava.
Education & Training
- Ten years of painting studies under Mgr. art. Soňa Herényiová-Belanová
- Two-year program in Art Therapy, “Intervention through Art” (Intervencia umením), with Prof. PaedDr. Jaroslava Šicková-Fabrici at Terra Therapeutica (260 hours)
- Internationally certified foundational program in Life Coaching, Christian Coach School
- Some 100 hours of experiential therapy and supervision with Mgr. Viera Pachová, trained in Compassionate Inquiry under Dr. Gábor Maté
- 120 hours of experiential psychoanalytic art therapy with academic painter Kamila Ženatá
- Over 2,500 hours of self-study in art, therapy, and personal development
Beyond the Canvas – AlterDiem
Alongside her painting practice, Lucia is a certified art therapist and founder of AlterDiem, a studio in Bratislava and Moravské Lieskové offering painting classes and art-therapy sessions. Her philosophy: “healing art, with the art of healing.”
No prior experience is needed to attend the sessions – just the willingness to pick up a brush and discover what’s asking for attention within.