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

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.

The Sensation of Walking

I learned to walk and I have walked
And I still walk…
Do I actually understand
How fortunate I am?
I can walk!
I can walk without help
And I walk using my own two legs
No prostheses, no walking stick
No artificial supports at all
Just my intention and my legs
My brain and my legs.
Usually I don’t think
About this fact, I don’t feel
This truth in such a way every day.
But it just so happens
That I am thinking about it now.
It seems so natural – walking.
Except in those moments when I see
David with his two prosthetic legs
And when I visit Ela
Her legs haven't moved for 15 years.
Then I feel how lucky I am.
I know I am independent
No diabetes and no MS
No accidents, no wars,
No natural disasters
I walk, I run, I jump, and
I trample on my left foot with my right foot
I move my body without begging for help
I can run away,
I can walk out whenever I wish.
Just a black swan phenomenon and
The unpredictability of luck.
It is the sensation
Of my fortunate perfection.
I am walking.
These are my feet.

by Kasia B. Turajczyk

Dunchideock, January 2010

If we don’t know the title for a painting and no description is given to us, then each of us will interpret it in different ways depending on the individual. Every version could be right, every reading could be wrong.

A painting is not a collection of images in the way that a film is, it is just one static frame. If you read the title first and then proceed to analyze and study the painting, you will be conditioned by what you’ve read along with your interpretation of the work. The knowledge about the title limits our imagination and guides what we receive from the work.

I experiment very often, particularly when I am visiting a museum or gallery to see new work. First I just look at the painting, I make my own vision, my own story about the painting and afterwards I look at the title and the description. Very often, especially in the case of modern art, I interpret the work in a way that does not reflect the intention of the artist.

My new painting tells a story, a true story, one that happened in the Garden of Lyalls Cottage.

Our neighbours have a cat. This cat is a hunter and a killer. They call him Tabby, which is obvious because he is a tabby cat; a real Mackerel tabby cat.  I like him very much, although he can be stubborn from time to time, especially when he needs attention. He visits me sometimes in my studio, jumps on the arm-chairs, looks at me for a while and then falls asleep and purrs.

In our garden grows a Smoketree which grows to about 5 metres high and has beautiful red/orange/purple leaves. The Cotinus Coggygria (Latin name) contrasts magnificently with all the greenery that surrounds it.

Once I found a bird close to the Smoketree, unfortunately he was dead. Only the beak, the eyes, something that originally could be called a head and some feathers were left as the rest has been eaten. It seemed to me that it was a black bird.

This inspired my new painting: “The true story of the cat, the tree and the bird”. The cat is a surreal giant cat, as ultimately he is the victor and dominates the story. The tree is only a blabbering witness to the events, and as for the bird… We should respect the bird with silence.

The true story of the Cat, the Tree and the Bird

Back to the Black Swan phenomenon. Before the discovery of Australia, people were convinced that all swans were white. This fact illustrates a severe limitation to our learning from observations or experience and the fragility of our knowledge.
I will describe here the Black Swan phenomenon using the words of Taleb.

First, it is an outlier, as it lies outside the realm of regular expectation; because nothing in the past can convincingly point to its possibility. Second, it carries an extreme impact. Third, in spite of its outlier status, human nature makes us concoct explanations for its occurrence after the fact, making it explainable and predictable.

Summarize  the triplet: rarity, extreme impact, and retrospective predictability.

What is the Black Swan logic? What you don’t know is far more relevant that what you do know. And now think about my Red Swan. What you don’t see in my painting is far more relevant that what you do see!

Here is the painting: the painting consists of two panels.

Red Swan by Kasia B.Turajczyk

The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable

As a dried leaf, the Bay Leaf is used as a flavouring to spice up our meals. Polish bigos is impossible to imagine without bay leaves. Can someone imagine garam masala without bay leaves? No, full stop! The Bay leaf is toxic. Especially if someone decides to drink a brew of bay leaves, say more than 10 litre. That could be harmful. As a drink it isn't hideous, I tried it once and it's actually OK, somewhat bitter with a strong taste.

What is the essence of the Bay Leaf? Everyone hears about it, everyone tastes it in one or another dish. But recently the bay leaf has fallen into obscurity and it is no longer as important as it was in the past. A long time ago the laurel tree was a noble tree; it was a sacred tree of the ancient Greek God Apollo. In Chinese folklore there is a great laurel tree on the moon. It used to much more than a mere spice.

My holy Bay Leaf, today I adore you with this new painting. Especially for you, I made this painting, using the best quality acrylic paints and I even fixed your authentic "SELF" inside the painting. The painting is made up of two panels. On the central panel you can see two real bay leaves. The panel is 100 cm x 120 cm. The second panel is a small one with a print of my right hand. It's function is as an homage to the cave painters of the stone age.

"Paranoia III – The wonderful life of a Bay Leaf" – by Kasia B. Turajczyk; 2009

I think that emptiness, when contrasted with its opposite, can be very dramatic and unsettling, especially in an abstract painting. Emptiness should not be confused with the void; they are two different concepts.
(Emptiness is a key concept in Buddhist philosophy, or more precisely, in the ontology of Mahayana Buddhism. The phrase "form is emptiness; emptiness is form" is perhaps the most celebrated paradox associated with Buddhist philosophy.)

"The Freedom of thinking - freedom of choice" by Kasia Turajczyk - 120cmx120cm /2009

The painting “The freedom of Thinking” is a new art work. It is a 6 panelled painting. Three of the panels are fairly expressive; the other three are fairly simple and calm.  Two of the three are extremely simple, almost empty. The white one is just a white space with two lines, one dirty-white whilst the other line is black. The second canvas, the red-orange one, is only disturbed by one black line, like a shadow.  The third panel is coloured black and white. It has more narrative content.

The three remaining panels are very expressive, full of traces of brushes and pallet knifes, the contours between the colours are aggressive and rough. The contrast between the calmness and the not-calmness, expression and the absence of it, is it significant? Maybe the calmness and its opposite complement one another more than contradict each other?
The person who buys the painting (the 6 panels) has the freedom to make a choice by their selection of the panels. He or she can hang the panels in the same way I think they belong together, but this is not inevitible. The person who will own the painting is free to make up her/his own mind; they are absolutely free to create their own composition. He or she can put the 6 panels together or maybe separate them into two groups; the dynamic group and the calm group on different walls, or maybe all of the 6 on the same wall but with a space between or maybe each of the panels will hang in different rooms.

I wonder to what extent that freedom to create ones own composition from the 6 panels will generate a new art work. I made the painting but at the moment that I cease to own it anymore the painting begins to live its own life. I believe that non-figurative art is “dispossessed”; a free interpretation is the essence of such art. Only the title of the art work may determine the thoughts of the person who looks at the painting.
It is my strong belief that freedom of thinking is the only freedom that we possess, and that the freedom of thinking at the same time determines our choices. In the sense that we only have free choice if those choices are conditional on our free thinking.  Whether we like it or not we are slaves of our material existence and our material possessions. Only our dreams and our thoughts are free and in some way independent.

Three of the panels are painted using acrylics and the other three are oil paintings. I used brushes, pallet knives, rice seeds and dried grasses.

The title of this work is "My past and my future", the newest one "my past and my future"

This Past represents the small abstract oil painting, the colourful one with the poem. It is a real poem, written by my. Occasionally I am possessed by my muse. In a sudden incandescence I become a poet.

Although I know that it's impossible
I want to touch your nakedness,
To get close to you.

So you open me the door to your dreams at least once,
When I dare to knock.

I would like to eat you like a mango,
In the way only I can do,
With sensitive perversion.

Embrace you like a Texan landscape embraced from a plane,
Without peaks, mountains and hills, sunny and boring.

If you couldn't lock yourself on seven locks and you didn't turn seven times seven keys in these locks than maybe something could be possible.

Give me one, this smallest key, please!

The small abstract I made in 2004. At the moment that I placed it on a big, white space of the canvas it became a new painting. The white canvas, the future is connected with the past, the small abstract painting by wires. Depending on the mood it could be connected outside (behind the canvas) or inside around the canvas. Our future is almost certainly determined by the choices that we made in the past and by the time that is left to us.

My past and my future by Kasia B. Turajczyk

I am thinking about framing it in a transparent frame. Maybe Plexiglas. I am curious about this idea. Or maybe I should use a black frame, since our future is limited by death. However why should death be black? Maybe death is colourful and elusive, like a rainbow?

I am painting millions paintings in my brain

I don't sleep. I can't sleep.

As a substitute for a sleep I imagine that I paint and

Indeed I am painting millions paintings in my brain.

My brain creates millions images and impressions in my memory

My memory is trying to remember my dreams and my visions.

My hands are drawing the encoded scraps of the past reality in my sleepless grey matter -

the wonderful past reality of those nights when I had been painting millions paintings in my brain.

I want to go to bed and sleep but I can't sleep when I am in bed. My brain hurts me.

My eyes want to turn off my brain, my mind hurts me, dreams, dream i want to dream you.

Please my brain, please let me go asleep and let me dream the dream that I am painting millions paintings in my brain.

©kbt 2008

Kasia, Mintaka and a sleepless night

©kbt 2008 -mixed media