Here is the second video of the project Contemporary Art in the Community. We had an unexpected visit from Doreen on October 1st 2011. She is very much into art and she liked our idea. The video has been taken outside my studio on the Haldon Hills in Devon. In this video Doreen recognises Hell when she sees it, and feels herself drowning in a really stormy, turbulent sea in one of my paintings.

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So there we are between Hell, Purgatory and Heaven. The GREAT TRIO issue of the Church Fathers, theologians and artists, not only the religious ones ).

I don’t believe in a God (or Gods). I don’t believe in Hell, Purgatory or Heaven. I believe in physics, in the concept of eternal universes, in the perfection of our imperfect cosmos. I believe in the force of nature, a kind of intelligent living being, but without any sentiments or feelings. I was born into a Catholic family and up until the age of 8 I received a Catholic tutoring. Even so I didn’t believe in God consciously from the age of 12, but I am still fascinated by Catholic religion and especially by medieval art and culture. Medieval Art is one of my greatest passions. I can’t take my eyes off the marvellous, absolutely stunning Gothic Cathedrals, impressive gothic altarpieces, the beautiful icons, the fantastic gargoyles, and burlesque creatures, unorthodox and original creations all. Actually I love all the medieval visual art, the architecture and designs.

More on Hell, Purgatory and Heaven – an abstract concept.

More on Devon Open Studios 2011 – third day "Out of the blue".

Today is the second day of Devon Open Studios 2011. No visitors today. Yesterday a couple with a child visited me. They just saw a sign on the wall and because the child needed to take a leak they stopped and visited me. They were nice people but not really interested in my paintings or in what I am doing or why I am doing it.

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I created a video/slideshow to present my art from the last two years. Paintings, collages, installations, small sculptures all created in Devon, in Dunchideock. And of course lots of nature, black swans, trees, a cat and nice music.

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The "Beautiful and Ugly" project has now been officially closed. The deadline has been slightly shifted in time. A few people could not visit me during the Devon Open Studios event itself, and asked me not to dismantle the installation but instead to wait until they had a chance to see it.

More on Garden Art Wall Installation – CD's – Part II

My first 17 months of living in the country, in a real village have been a wonderful experience and bore lots of wonderful paintings, collages, installation and even small sculptures. The nature of Devon inspired me to be very creative with materials and to experiment with unusual topics for me.  I hope it will move me forward to discover new possibilities for the surface, texture, patterns of my paintings and to invent new original genres.

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During the Devon Open Studios I am inviting my visitors to take part in the process of producing an installation. It is an Art Wall Installation in my opinion. It is a large wall board, painted in different colours from black to white and all the nuances of white-grey, grey-grey and black grey. I prepared lots of mini-art works- painted old CD's. They are painted  in different colours and they have different surfaces. Some of them smooth, some of them rough. All of them unique. Some of them ugly and some of them very nice.  I divided the Art Wall Installation – the board in two parts: the Beautiful one and the Ugly one. We all love judging.  We don't like to be judged but we do love to judge other people and other things. We should not do it. It is very bad actually, but we just do it. In the case of my installation I am asking people to make a judgement about a small piece of art work I made. I ask them to make a choice between what they think is beautiful and what they think is ugly, between nice and not nice, between what they  like and what they don't like.  The reactions are very interesting, some of the visitors don't want to choose an ugly CD. They just refuse to do so. Some of them are saying that such a concept as ugly don't not exist in art. Others I guess don't want to be unpleasant to me, the artist. And me, I am just curious about the taste of people, what they do like and what they do not. What is ugly for them and what is beautiful. I don't know if I will be able to come to an eventual intelligent conclusion at the end of this experiment.  But I do know that I am very curious about the final result.

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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.

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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.

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