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

The topsy-turfy garden of Lyalls Cottage by Kasia B. Turajczyk

My two new paintings, actually collages. I painted them in Dunchideock, in my studio in the Garden of Lyalls Cottage. I forgot it to present them to you.

These two paintings belong to the series The Secret Garden of Lyalls Cottage. They are abstracts, both acrylics on board, small sizes. 

They are very colourful and very bizarre in some ways. I used an incredible lot of weird stuff to make them. The garden of Lyalls Cottage is a very rich source for beautiful, colourful and natural (living as well as dead) objects, and junk. It is amazingly wonderful.

Usually I always explain what I add/ put/ use to make a painting. Not this time. It is a puzzle for you. Find out what I used to make them and then tell me. If you are right I have a nice surprise for you.

I have to frame this paintings, it will be not an easy task to do it, I am afraid.

I am just happy in this garden by Kasia B.T.

My studio is situated in the epicentre of the garden, in a certain way that is. It is in the middle of the gardens ‘natural resources” and flora, as well being centred in the macro and micro dimensional sense. Among the trees, bushes, and flowers there are also a huge variety of insects, birds and other animals, both alive and dead. The nearness and the intimacy with the nature has an undeniable affect on my imagination and it so happened that my new born paintings are full of leaves, styles, petals, filaments, fruits, and small stems from trees, bushes, flowers and weeds; but also some parts of dead and alive insects and birds. In some of my old abstract paintings I have already used couscous, rice, diverse seeds, grasses and bay leaves. But it was only incidental and my imagination was limited by the ingredients I had in my kitchen and on my balcony. In Dunchideock, in the garden of Lyalls Cottage I have unbounded forms, colours, pigments, consistencies, structures and odours; the last aspect is only significant for me not for the paintings I am afraid.

At the moment I am still at the stage of experimenting with the natural materials, dried and fresh. I take small cones, flowers, actually everything with interesting constitution and facture. Some of the leaves, styles, fruits and stems I let desiccate and use/ will use them dried. I am thinking of experimenting with natural pigments from fruits, vegetables and leaves. I will keep you updated.

Once, strangely my right hand had became paralysed for around 10 minutes, and I had a weird feeling before and after like someone had acupunctured my hand with 1000 needles. Prior to this sensation I had used lots of orange-red fruits from a plant growing in our garden. Afterwards Jim checked this plant on Wikipedia. It appeared that this woodland plant was known by an abundance of common names including Wild arum, Lords and Ladies, Jack in the Pulpit, Devils and Angels, Cows and Bulls, Cuckoo-Pint, Adam and Eve, Bobbins, Naked Boys, Starch-Root and Wake Robin and is poisonous (especially its attractive orange berries). The berries contain oxalates of saponins which have needle-shaped crystals which irritate the skin, mouth, tongue, and throat, resulting in swelling, breathing difficulties, burning pain, and stomach upsets.
Furthermore I discovered that the juice from blueberries isn’t violet like the berry. It is more like brown-green-dark purple. Only the skins of the blueberries possess the right violet/ dark pigment.

In my new painting on the Barb-Blueberry cat, I used juice from the blueberries, acrylics, stamens from an unknown plant, a piece of a branch from a cypress tree, petals of red and scarlet roses, dried and fresh. You can also find stamens, hairs and petals from a weed called Common Corncockle (also poisonous- “it has been used in folk medicine to treat a range of ills, from parasites to cancer but it may produce chronic or acute, potentially fatal poisoning”).

Back to my painting: the story is obviously about a cat, a lady cat. I have satisfied myself that my Tabby cat shouldn’t be single. And so the Blueberry Barb was borne. (The Barb is from Barbara, women with this name are very close to me).

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

And see me now! I don’t even want to think about living 24 hours, 30 days per months, even 12 months per year in Amsterdam, Vienna or London.  I am just perfectly happy here, even if it rains cats and dogs almost for a month. I am just happy, simply happy, audaciously happy. I am happy because I can be, watch, see, breath, absorb, take up and feel delighted by the nature around me.

Dunchideock, the garden of Lyalls Cottage, the nature of South Devon are the inspiration of my new paintings. The new paintings are combination of my observation of the surrounding nature, my imagination, the happiness of creation, painting, experimenting, and transforming that which surrounds me and how I experience it.

Here are a few of the new acrylic paintings from my series ‘The Secret Garden of Lyalls Cottage’ and “The Shadow of the Invisible in Dunchideock”.

It is raining in Red in Dunchideock - by Kasia B. Turajczyk; 50,2 cm x 40,8 cm; from the series The Secret Garden of Lyalls Cottage

The Tree in the Secret Garden - Kasia B. Turajczyk; 50,8 cm x40,2 cm; from the series The Secret Garden of Lyalls Cottage

The night has fallen down in Dunchideock by Kasia Turajczyk; from the series Shadow of the Invisable

The night has fallen down in Dunchideock II by Kasia B. Turajczyk 50,8 x 40,2 cm; From the series "Shadow of the invisable"