„PLEASURES AND TERRORS” – ARTIST STATEMENT

The relation between painting and imagination, eroticism; dreams all have been always a constant theme for me. The abiding theme is the human condition, explored through painting. It is the relationship, the struggle and fragility of feelings that inspire me. Self destructive love, imagination, mystery, compulsiveness, addiction, insecurity, mistrust, tragedy, continuity, dream, safeness, fear, cold, hot, night, day, peace, trap – it is a journey of pleasures and terrors. What I am telling is a story about dark and private theatre, which is reaching the subconscious roots of the human condition. A massive expanse of rich colour is exposing the raw vitality of the mind. In layering of both figurative and abstract elements, I am making a combination of visual clichés from dreams and stories from childhood; stories that kept us dry mouthed, stories which help to tackle issues of identity. I am playing with beauty and the expanse of dreams through heavily applying paint and creating textural landscape.

By searching for freedom from reality, utilizing automatic techniques and careful study, I am exploring physical expression of emotion and the fundamental themes of life.

Creating canvases laden with emotion and personal feelings is my necessity, obsession and addiction, my own insatiable appetite. Believing in instinct over reason, I am starting over with every painting. The relation between value of colour and texture is my formula for expressing my vision. The effect of the feeling’s complexity is doubled by the works chaotic texture. Trying to contour human silhouette in bold structure on the surface, I am exploring the physical expression of the theme. The paintings give direct attention to their own physicality and because of that, the human form emanates with psychological structure, driving to the insubstantial. Colour and texture are symbols.

Some parts of the paintings are abstracted because of the elusive nature of our feelings. Some of the paintings are open – ended, which constitutes effects of saving suppressed emotion. Some of the paintings represent the form threatened and squeezed. Most of them require many sittings as the sudden realization or impatient result can be possible only by accumulated understanding of the theme. Using hands to model paint on canvases and boards, I am transferring feelings and reactions in a very physical way.

Katarzyna Gajewska
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