Kasia in the Countryside

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 diovan generic alternatives 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