Artist in Exeter/Dunchideock to take part in Devon Open Studios

Kasia Turajczyk
Lyalls Cottage, Dunchideock, Exeter, EX6 7YD

http://gallery.kasiaturajczyk.com

Phone: 01392 833904

Established Dunchideock artist, Kasia Turajczyk will be inviting guests into her studio/local gallery to view her new work this year in the forthcoming county-wide arts event, Devon Open Studios.

It is the largest showcase for artists in the county and Kasia Turajczyk will be joining over 260 artists opening their doors for 16 days from 4th –19th of September. Kasia will be taking part for the first time and is looking forward to her contribution to the event held at her studio in the garden of Lyalls Cottage and her gallery within the cottage.

Kasia began painting as a child, and for her becoming a successful artist is the realization of a life-long passion. She has lived in several countries with different political systems; diverse cultures, different languages, peoples, and landscapes and that fact has had a big influence on her development and growth as an artist and as a person.

Kasia works in diverse fields of art: paintings, installations, collages, fantasy art and new media. When you visit her studio you will be able to see examples of such work, together with recent abstract and modern figurative collages with a hint of surrealism, inspired by the nature of Devon. Nature is also a source of raw materials for Kasia's art, which enables her to achieve some very interesting structural effects.

She will also be showing some new installations entitled Personalities, created from old CD’s, acrylics and recycled materials (weather permitting in the open air of the garden). Kasia will also be inviting her visitors to take part in the process of producing an installation. She will be providing such an environment during the Open Studio weeks to make it possible for visitors to work together with her, and to have the opportunity to talk to her directly about the creative process.

Kasia Turajczyk is looking forward to the show and hopes that Devon Open Studios will help raise her profile. In 2009 over 30,000 visits were recorded, an almost two fold increase from the year before. Free to the public, the event provides a unique chance to see a wide variety of new work.

Devon Open Studios produces a comprehensive guide to help visitors plan their own art trail and combine browsing art with enjoyment of the county’s fantastic scenery. Free copies of the guide are now available at tourist information centres, libraries, galleries, and hotels. The most prominent place in Dunchideock where the guide will be available is the well known Lord Haldon Hotel (10 minutes walk from Kasia Turajczyk’s studio -http://www.lordhaldonhotel.co.uk).

The Blueberrry Fantasy - acrylics on canvas

Instead of the usual story about the inspiration for a painting, in this case for "As a winter night falls over Devon" and how it came to life, this time I present a poem. A poem about creation, art and the Tao.  I think it fits perfectly together with this painting.  "As a winter night falls over Devon" is a collage on board.

TWO – THE ONE FOR ME

Under heaven all can see beauty as beauty only because there is ugliness.
All can know the good as the good only because there is the bad.

Therefore creating and not creating arise together;
Dark and light complement each other;
Large and small contrast each other;
Realistic and abstract follow one another;
Colour and structure harmonize each other.

Therefore the artist goes about feeling and seeing not judging
Creating not reproducing
The ten thousand artworks rise and fall without finish,
Making, yet not possessing,
Working, yet not taking credit.
Art is done, then forgotten.
Therefore it lasts forever.

Based on Two from Tao Te Ching, by Lao Tsu

As the winter-night falls over Devon by Kasia Turajczyk

My new painting in the Metropolis series is called “Metropolis and its heart”.

Metropolis and its heart, acrylics on canvas; 90cm x 90cm

I have been thinking for a long time about what constitutes the heart of the big city. What could it be? The technology and the evolutionary progress and development in the education of homo sapiens? Or our nature, the fact that we are sociable, a social and collective animal? However this is inconsistent with the reality – people who live in a small village or town are more sociable and less anonymous than those who live in big molochs. Living in a big city makes us 100% nameless, more private and more secret.

Our planet, our Earth can exist without us, maybe better than with us. But what about the Metropolis? Metropolis is a human creation. Without homo sapiens there will be no Metropolis. After 100 years, maybe even less than that, the Metropolis will be trash, in ruins, a great source for fantasy art paintings and illustrations.

The Metropolis is such a big thing and the order within it is not constrained during its development to repeat the things that exist in one part in any other part. Even if we reflect that the big cities were made by and for people, some order exists in it without our knowledge. There is also a lot of order in the creation of Metropolis which we humans have put there, like a string in a maze, so that we shall not lose our way. However the living system that is Metropolis has its own order, but the brain is separated from the heart. This amazing, ill and degenerate body, also beautifully ruthless and always sleepless, can’t exist without us humans. Therefore the heart of the Metropolis is us – PEOPLE.

If you see the painting in the flesh you can spot lots of creatures inside the central part of the work, and also lots of small creatures all around the suburbs. We are the heart!

"If growing up means it would be beneath my dignity to climb a tree, I'll never grow up, never grow up, never grow up! Not me!"
— J.M. Barrie (Peter Pan)

The painting “For Lesiu Orzesiu” is atypical for me at this moment. I used to paint in this way when I was 14 -16 years old. It was in the era when I first discovered oil paints and canvasses. My first oil painting, which I still have, presents Pinocchio, a toy made in Russia. I got it from Christopher, when I was 15 years old. I still have my Russian Pinocchio, unfortunately, he is missing his nose. The nose became detached somewhere, somehow, at some point during our joint trips. Pinocchio is made from plastic (such a very hard plastic) and is wearing knit wear made by me. I took him everywhere with me; we travelled together through almost the whole of Europe and some other parts of the world.

As a child I loved the story about Pinocchio and Geppetto. This wooden puppet gave me courage and hope that there was always a chance for salvation and rebirth. Although I was the opposite of Pinocchio, and told the truth. However, telling the truth got me constantly in trouble, too. I remember being surprised hearing my Mum telling lies and not growing donkey ears, I really expected her ears to grow. I am still waiting for this magical moment. When I finally realized that telling the truth is not practical, it was already too late for me. Not telling the truth turned out to be even greater torture than telling the truth. At some point of my life I started to create made-up stories, and this fact began to cause me much satisfaction, especially observing people listening to my far-fetched absurdities. My excuses for doing that were very simple. It was not lying or cheating with premeditation, it was just my imagination that needed to take flight.

Returning to the painting “For Lesiu Orzesiu” the creatures in it are real and the colours too. Lesiu asked me to make his beloved creatures immortal. I guess the painting will travel to India with him, soon. And so the word became flesh (the painting!) It is a medium sized painting on canvas 70cm x 50cm. I used the best Rembrandt’s acrylic paints (I think they are one of the best) with a minimum admixture of oil.
I hope that Peter Pan will always be alive in Lesiu and that Lesiu never lets him fade into oblivion. Amen!

Heaven and hell have first of all a symbolic meaning for me. I was born into a family with Catholic traditions  (with the exception of a few atheists and one Buddhist). I was born in a country where for many being Catholic is the status quo. For various individuals in Poland being a part of the Roman Catholic family is a criterion of being Polish too. If I was born in India in a Buddhist family hell and heaven would be for me just abstract, meaningless words.

I remember as a child, I had to attend Sunday masses. I didn’t like them; it was for me a kind of torment, literally and metaphorically.  Probably I was very afraid to be confronted again and again, by the fearful personifications of God presented by the clerics. I was terrified to be punished for all the sins that I hadn’t committed yet, but would in the future. There was no escape from that. Even the angels had a kind of apocalyptic dimension. When lying in bed, I often thought about my “personal” Angel. I had no doubt about the fact that somewhere an Angel was watching me. I had one big problem. I wasn’t sure if it was a good Angel or a bad one. Maybe it was a hellish one and not a holy one.  I had a picture of an angel hanging above my bed. He was beautiful, with blue eyes and white hair and a very, very distressing smile. And so it was that my Angel was gazing at me, as if he knew that one day I would betray him and leave him. When at the age of 12 I had rebelled and had declared  that “I don’t want to believe and I categorically deny any belief in such a cruel, evil, bad god  and I do not want to be frightened any more of hell, devils and original sin” I had terrible dreams for the first months afterwards. In my dreams I was somewhere close to the church. It was a big Gothic church, and it was always night. I was attacked by devils, they tore me, hurt me; wild winds had jerked me into the square in front of the church, darkness and a terrible fear occupied my dreams.  That was a horrible experience,  a nightmare, but even more it cemented my decision that God, who is haunting me,  punishing me, and scaring me, will not be my god.
And so it happened, that I became somehow atheist, somewhat Buddhist, a follower of my personal faith; all together my religion is a kind of eclecticism.

Since that time I have been trying to avoid that hell on earth, in my daily life, in my relationships with others, but also in my thoughts and feelings. Hell and Heaven, we create them for ourselves, here on this planet, in our lives, our thoughts, feelings, beliefs, hatreds, and in relationships.
Hell and Heaven are also created for us by nature, life, and the condition of being homo sapiens, something that is unavoidable; we can only accept it.

After this very long introduction it is time for introducing my new painting.

This is an installation composed of four panels, titled “Heaven Is In My Mind”. It belongs to the “My Brain” series.
There is a lot of blue, gold, purple, dark plum, grains of all sorts, and recycled stuff.
It is large: 80 cm x 80 cm.

The story of mouse, thatched cottage and Dunchideock by Kasia Turajczyk

A mouse (plural mice) is a small mammal belonging to the order of rodents. The best known mouse is of course the common house mouse. But in a case of Lyalls Cottage, the common species are the field mice. They have stood with us in the autumn and winter time and they are visiting us on regular bases every day in the spring, at the moment. Our mice are very keen on expensive chocolate. They also like very much my paintings, especially the ones which contain seeds. Often they are very timid face to face, but not always.
Since mice could be a perfect companion pets I don’t understand why some are so afraid for them. They can be playful, loving and can grow used to being handled. But I admit I didn’t try it with our field mice, no time for it.

The mice have more reasons to be afraid of people than vice versa. Mice are a staple in the diet of many small carnivores. Humans have eaten mice since prehistoric times and still eat them as a delicacy throughout eastern Zambia and northern Malawi. In various countries mice are used as pet food for pets such as snakes, lizards, frogs, tarantulas and birds of prey, and many pet stores carry mice for this purpose. I didn’t hear real stories about mice eating people, till now.

I don’t like them when they are trying to damage my paintings by eating them, but except for that, I like them, actually. In my new painting there is a small image of a field mouse we found in our bath-tub. It was such a small, tiny, frightened little thing. And now she/he is the honourable guest in my painting.
I used acrylics, cd, leaves, seeds, canes, wax and lots of other unusual things. It is a kind of abstract image of Lyalls Cottage and Dunchideock (the village) at this time of the year (Spring).

From the Personalities series are the two new installations “Who is Who?” and “Broken Curriculum”.

It is really fun to use old CDs, seeds, some recycled materials and combine them with acrylics. The limited space on the old CD’s and the same form all the time forces me to be very creative with the colours and to think in a different way than usual when I am using canvas.

I can make 100 absolutely different CDeens (a new word for painted CD’s) and then from the 100 small pieces of CDeens I can create lots of new art works. Vertical, horizontal, round, square – the bases could be very diverse.

Who is who? 48 cm x 12 cm on wooden panel

What do you think about this idea of using old CD’s to create an artwork?

A new version of the collage "The Family". This work is a part of a big installation entitled Personalities. It is created from CD's, acrylics and recycled material. A weird stuff. It is a great pleasure to create/ paint/ make this project real and alive.

My perception about the subject “mice and high culture” changed dramatically after the most recent event in my studio. I didn’t expect that a rodent would appreciate art! You see…..I was wrong. They do.
One of the agreements from the Four Agreements by Jose Ruiz says ‘do not make assumptions”. How true. I did not expect that mice would love art; my paintings particularly. Perhaps I shouldn’t have used so many tasty seeds? This painting (see the image) has been eaten by mice (I assume so, I hope that we have only mice here and no rats!). I assume that they were mice, I don’t expect bats or spiders would eat my painting, maybe I am wrong?
This is my new painting from the series 'The Personalities'. The title is ‘The Family’. Maybe I will bring some changes into it the next few days……I am not sure of it is ready or not.

It hurts me when I think about Haiti.
Every time when I think about the past of Haiti I get very angry .
Tragedy, love, blood, voodoo, anger, bloody history, freedom, colonialism, slavery, plunder, natural disaster and hope.
Lots of weird stuff in my painting.
I hope for better future for Haiti.
A radical shift in awareness, values,
and behaviour is required to meet the bright future.
The painting is 3D, it is acrylic + lots of impossible things; 114 h. cm x 74 b. cm
The money I will raise will go to Haiti.

Poem by James Mercer Langston Hughes

I’m looking for a house
somewhere in this world
Where white shadows
Will not fall.

There is no such house
Dark brother
No such house
At all.