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

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.

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)

I love this time of the year. I know lots of people think it is nonsense and commercial and only about money, food, drink, and presents and this kind of stuff.

For me Christmas means hope for us. I always become very hopeful for our species (normally I am not), more positive, more optimistic in this time of the year. It is just for a very short time but it keeps me going for the next year.

And I love decorating the Christmas Tree (a very old pagan tradition), probably it is very silly, but I just find it irresistible.
Again, Merry Christmas and a really peaceful 2010 (no war!) for this planet.

Here is a special message from Mintaka with a really funny mixed media art work.

My name is Mintaka. I am stranger here; I was born in the Nebula of Orion.

Your species is dominant, but weird. The only time in the long calendar of the year when you are kind, forgiving, charitable and pleasant for each other is the Christmas time. It is the only time when “men and women open their shut-up hearts freely”. (One of your famous writers pointed this out a long time ago).

I am not sure I understand that. Why don’t you behave in such a way on all the other days of the year? I am watching you and waiting to see you brave and beautiful. Maybe one day….

Mintaka Meditating on the Meaning of Christmas

I presented this painting, together with the other two from the series Metropolis at my last solo exhibition (Lodz, Poland) and the reaction was very positive. However the paintings were taken as a very fatalistic vision of our life by the visitors.

Metropolis III - Nothing is certain but death and taxes' painting by Kasia B. Turajczyk; acrylics on canvas 90 cm x 90 cm

Going back to the taxes: from time to time I have to spend a lot of time with my accountant discussing my taxes. In a certain way accountancy is highly creative work. Nevertheless I hate it, I hate to do the administrative work and I don’t like to pay the taxes. And it is not that I don’t want to give my money away for a good reason or to charitable projects. I just don’t want to give my money to the government who will spend it and invest it in/for the salaries of the clerks, politicians, their weird expenses, their trips to more or less exotic places, idiotic ideas, insane wars and thousands of other preposterous fixations.

About Death – it is sure that we were born at some point and it is sure that we will die once. We know when we were born but we don’t know when we will pass away. And we don’t know how. But, this raises another question.  Is it actually important how we die? In what way, how long, distinguished or not, humane or not, in a total fear or in a peaceful reconciliation?
I think that all the issues about death are very unimportant at the end. quasi intellectual – quasi philosophical – part hypocritical debates.
Death is a split second when we go from a kind of material condition of entity into nonentity. For this act of nature isn’t important at all where, when and in what kind of situation we are dying. For sure nobody knows, what death actually is, what is after death, what one can expect on the other distinct side.

Maybe, a black hole?

And as Woody Allen says in one of his movies “Fear of death! It’s funny. I have that too. My dog has that too.”

P.S.1.  Medieval art is one of my favourite art periods, I just love it. I am fascinated by the fact that the people of the medieval period could have lived in such intimacy with death. Life was never-ending; death was a mere interruption of the continuum; after which the soul would await the Last Judgement

P.S.2.   Comment from David: “On a side note I think it's interesting how surrealist art can be open to different interpretations, each clearly dependant on the individuals own knowledge and experience… but then I guess that's the same with anything that's not accompanied by words. Either way, a very good picture! ”

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