It seems to me that art scene at the moment is best to describe as exhausted and recessive. Anyway, what is presented in the modern art centres. The 'average' people don't understand what the modern/ temporary artists do, they don't like the avant-garde of our time, they don't like it, do not appreciate it, they don't see it as art. I don't blame them. I think most of the artists presented in museums are talking to themselves, have an inner dialogue with their empty mind. Most of the 'Art' isn't art any more. Nothing is art and everything is art. And I blame Duchamp for that ))

Fountaine - Duchamp

It takes place at the Northcott Theatre in Exeter, Stocker Road, EX4 4QB between 2-9 PM. There will be speeches at 3pm, followed later by entertainment and of course the artist demonstrations. Several artists will present their art works, and one of them will be me. Refreshments will also be available. It's a great space, and we hope (the artists and the DOS organisation) it will be a great day, too. The studios themselves are open from 10 AM on Saturday 3rd for two weeks.
In an article about Devon Open Studios 2011 The Independent said:

Worlds away from the enormous price tags of London's Cork Street, or the glossy modernism of the Frieze Art Fair in Regent's Park, London, Devon Open Studios offers visitors the rare privilege of viewing art in the context of where and how it is made. And, should you feel like buying something, you're unlikely to have to re-mortgage your house to do so.

The county has long captivated artists with its dramatic landscapes. Local institutions such as the Cider Press Centre near Dartington, the Devon Guild of Craftsmen in Bovey Tracey and the Plymouth Arts Centre have long provided visitors with the edited highlights of Devon's artistic life. But creative types are now keen to show their work on their own terms, hence the burgeoning success of the Open Studios project.

Now in its seventh year, the event has grown inexorably from a handful of artists showing work in their garages and living rooms to a well-organised trail. Weavers, potters, glassblowers, photographers, printmakers, sculptors, jewellers, quilt-makers and wood-turners are all more than happy to explain their practices to visitors for a fortnight, over tea. The event costs nothing to the visitor and there is no prescribed route. The best bet is to pick through the brochure to see whose artwork appeals and just turn up on their doorstep.

The invitation to the Launch of Devon Open Studios 2011

Devon Open Studios 2011 also has its own channel on YouTube. Here's Greg Ramsden talking about "Discipline in Painting":

I met Greg a year ago at the South West Contemporary Art Fair in Totnes. He is a very nice person but also a brilliant painter, I have to admit it.

It is a slightly weird place to present my art, and I still don't really know what I am doing there…but nevertheless you can see some of my paintings on their web site. http://www.sigvardson.com/exh_current.php

A short interview with Kasia Turajczyk about her art by Danish TV-Lolland

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

by Karolina Jablonska (independent art curator & historian of art)

Kasia Turajczyk belongs to the group of artists for whom art is a kind of sixth sense.
Apart from the fact that they see, hear, taste, smell and are sensitive to touch, they also create. Art for them is not only a cognitive instrument but also a kind of warehouse, inside which they collect experiences; first of all their own experiences, but they also gather the experiences of those near and dear, friends, neighbours and sometimes even enemies. Art also supports their mind; it is a kind of enclosure, within which it is possible to explain that which is impossible. Owing to such a comprehension of art, the creations of Kasia Turajczyk are extremely varied.

One of her forms of creation is painting, and a part of this work could be defined as realistic. In the case of these works of the artist it is not only the realism, but especially the atmosphere – in all of the paintings one can feel a kind of warmth. Not only because of the connection with the sun of southern Europe (visible in some of the landscapes); but also because of the connections with the emotions of the portrayed persons. Landscape paintings are for the artist a kind of specific notebook (diary) of voyages, records of the memories associated with a certain place – a country, a city or a street; it is a challenge for the artist to show the impressions, the atmosphere, of the places they were in. In these realistic works, the artist often uses bright colours, softly overlapping each other. There are some exceptions. One of these is a painting that came into being after a visit to the USA; ‘California Dream’. Although this painting is almost hyper-realistic, the street of San Francisco depicted therein seems entirely unrealistic. It is painted with a firm, courageously arranged colour scheme. An integral part is a red frame, designed by the artist herself. On the inside of the frame are inscriptions : California is a fine place to live if you happen to be an orange (Woody Allen). There is science, logic, reason; there is thought verified by experience. And then there is California (Edward Abbey). The inscriptions are an indication that among Kasia's interests you will not only find painting, but also literature.

The artist is currently writing a book. Its leading heroes are two creatures: Betelgeuse and Mintaka (kind of dragons), born in the nebula of the constellation of Orion. This literary-fantasy tale (as the artist herself calls it) is illustrated by Kasia herself, and contains a multitude of cultural and civilizing forces – well known themes and plots, real as well as imaginary, all mixed together; everything is possible, and this makes the story more interesting.

Among Kasia’s paintings are some which one would not immediately connect with fantasy. However because the composition of some elements cannot be found in the real world, these paintings bring to mind thoughts about surrealism. An example of such a work is Panta Rhei – fairly economical in form, it depicts a seaside landscape with a flying Pelican, projecting a shadow on the sand and there are also wide open doors hanging over the beach. Such paintings show restlessness and tension very clearly; which could be caused by the diversity and variety of the possibile associations which every observer can find inside oneself, dependent upon ones own experience and sensitivity.

Nature is a very important part of the artist’s creation. Nature is not only very important in Kasia’s life and in Kasia’s world as a source of beauty and inspiration but also as a source of painting material. Kasia uses in her work leaves, petals, filaments, fruits, small stems from trees, bushes, flowers, weeds, feathers of birds. In some of her abstract paintings she also uses couscous, rice, diverse seeds, grasses and bay leaves. Because of that, she has achieved some very interesting structural effects. But more important than this is the fact that because of using these natural materials she builds a bridge between the so often hermetic world of art (for example the limitation of frames ), and the reality that surrounds us. Again the art helps her ‘to manage’ her fascination with the world. Being surrounded by nature Kasia wants to know it, touch it, analyse it, see how it changes in time, and because she thinks visually, she also uses it in her art.

Kasia Turajczyk is an attentive observer of the world and people, and she demands the same from her audience. Her work “Freedom of thinking, freedom of choice” is a installation consisting of 6 small canvasses. The owner of the installation (the 6 panels) has the freedom to make a choice not only about where to hang the installation, but also how to hang it by composing the 6 small paintings according to their own feelings, character and their own discretion. Maybe the artist will in the near future develop this way of thinking about the process of creating art and will attempt such a work at an exhibition in order to make it possible for the recipients to work with the artist together during the process of seeing/visualising? The likelihood of this happening appears to be good considering that during her exhibition at the Gallery Forum in Lodz Kasia prepared stickers in three colours each indicating: the favourite painting, the second best painting and the third most liked painting and then she asked the guests to mark the paintings according to their own criteria. Due to such an artistic concept the artist showed that art for her is another way of communicating with the world and with people. Art for her is an additional sense, exceptional because it reacts to very different stimuli, and that makes her art so varied and rich, yet always honest.

From Fruit till Fantasy – Art Exhibition

I would like to start by changing the name of the exhibition of Kasia Turajczyk. For me, ladies and gentlemen, the correct title should be “Poetry painted with a brush”. I needed a few days to digest the impressions that I got after visiting this exhibition of Kasia, and I bear them like the proverbial chicken with her egg.

I am not an artist, I am a writer and a poet, and I can’t describe the styles of works of art using technical jargon. It is only the beauty that grabs me and disturbs the rhythm of my heart. It is the beauty that sings and strikes faultlessly into my soul.
The paintings of the artist that I have seen at the exhibition have not only sung of beauty but have also sparkled like a golden sequin in the darkness of my ordinariness.

Some of the paintings made me uneasy, reminded me about great and mysterious things. Yes, you hear correctly, mysterious. Mysterious, because my imagination had been fired by the variety of the subjects and the multiplicity of expressions that I could not arrange, name or even picture. One has to be a great artist to impart such a broad range of art to people, in which every sensitive person can find her or his own, often forgotten nostalgias, longings, upsets, delights and admirations of the world but not only that. Some of the paintings forced you to think intensely, some absorbed ones attention with almost catastrophic suggestions. Two of the art works fascinated the wife of my grandson Lukasz so much that she wanted to buy them, but unfortunately she couldn’t afford it.

I would like to say something about those paintings. The first of them (Metropolis alias Moloch) in orange-brown-dark colours, suggested (to me at least) that after a horrible cataclysm only the shells of empty houses are left and no more life could be born again. The second painting has been painted in a fire red colour, we see hundred of dark persons on it headed as if in a trance to a burning semicircle. The semicircle is just about to start opening to absorb all the people and after that it will be closed forever. If people stopped in front of these paintings, they would not move for a long time. Watching, musing, as if they were joining the queue of the dark, bloody creatures in the painting. These works have absorbed my attention probably because of the anonymity of the expressions, the extraordinary colours and the camouflaging of the content – allowing unrestricted interpretation for the viewer.

My personal favourite, my own much loved painting, was entitled “A moment”. I will try to describe the large amount of feelings and impressions that I had while watching it. It is impossible to tell you about all of the perceptions and feelings I had but I would like to try and I hope that you will understand me. We have two boy's silhouettes, we see them from behind, they are walking and looking ahead. It is light and green around them. One can get an impression that the boys, brothers, friends are walking aimlessly, but this is only the first impression. The silhouettes breathe resoluteness, determination. They see a goal in front and they will reach it because of the nostalgia and their faith in something big and beautiful. The ramblers have a vision and during the walk they get more and more confident that they will reach the end and will achieve ther goal. Great power and the joy of victory is radiating from their small figures. I am going to join them. I throw away my sticks, because they prevent me from keeping up with them. I feel light, able, pushed by the confidence emanating from the boys. I am sure I will reach my goal just like they will. For me it could be the final one.

Thank you Kasia for your beautiful soul and your name (Kasia means something special to me)

Thank you for sharing your beautiful visions with us, with the world.

Marianna Sokól

(Writer and poet, a member of Polish Writer Society)
(Read during the opening of the Poetry Evening in Lodz, 13 October 2009)
(This review has been published in the Akant Magazine)