In the fall of 1974, I began my studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow where I spent the following five years in the Department of Painting. It was a period of self-discovery as well as immense pleasure. Human figures painted in oil emerged as my main area of interest and has remained as such until today. These were the times of soviet style communism in Poland in which I was considered a controversial young Polish artist. My work was being compared to the American hyperrealist Pearlstein's.
I obtained my Master's degree in the summer of 1979, and soon after, was chosen to represent Krakow at a national juried exhibition of the most prominent young professional painters. I began postgraduate studies at the Faculty of Stage Design in order to increase my earning potential; the only student employed by a state-run theatre as an assistant. At work, I realized the extend of the control exercised by the communist government over the world of Polish culture. I got to know also the people in charge. That was not the life I wished to live, therefore, my trying to earn the certificate of a stage designer proved useless. For a time, I worked as an instructor at a community centre and spent a lot of time with my daughter. Mostly, however, I began preparations for leaving the country. We were selling our possessions and buying travel gear.
I will never forget that Sunday morning at a refugee camp in Italy when the news about the Polish military coup d'etat was passed on by a priest—just two days after our defection. All communication lines with Poland were severed. Soon I discovered the Spanish Steps in Rome and became a portrait artist. In the course of our stay in Italy, I produced hundreds of street portraits; but also, I mastered the art of quick observation which would become beneficial to me in the future.
We arrived in Vancouver, BC, as landed immigrants in the spring of 1982, and again, within a couple of weeks, I was making street portraits in magnificent Stanley Park, overlooking the bay. I felt overwhelmed by the cultural differences, I noticed, between Europe and North America; although, I remained optimistic about my own ability to succeed. Visits to local art galleries, however, made me realise that without a proper studio space, or the knowledge of the local marketplace, my painting for a living was out of the question. I found a job with a graphic arts firm in downtown Vancouver. It was my introduction into the print advertising industry.
I learned the airbrush technique and began my career as an illustrator. In three years, I gained the reputation as the "#1" airbrush illustrator in Western Canada and opened a business of my own. I seemed to have given up the desire to further explore the world of fine arts as well as my own spirituality and I was getting frustrated. My business partnership failed. I continued working as a freelancer, burning the midnight oil in a small downtown studio; however, my strength was slowly diminishing. In 1988 my wife and I separated. What followed, was a prolonged period of cultural and emotional alienation, with the only escape being work and poetry-writing. At night, I was catching-up on reading literature that had been banned in communist Poland. Gradually, I was able to revive my interest in oil painting, away from small town commercialism, but regrettably, also lacking artistic feed-back from the community. I experimented with three-dimensional abstraction and made sketches for compositions involving human figure.
In the summer of 1992, I closed down my studio as an illustrator because I was unable to generate the necessary income. On top of that, I realized the irreversible changes brought about by computers in the print world. For a while, I worked as a sales rep for a magazine publisher, and then, took-up a course in desktop publishing. I went back to Poland for a visit for the first time in 12 years. On my return, I went through a nervous breakdown and found myself homeless. It was only thanks to a new and loving relationship with another artist that I was able to resume the process of spiritual growth and recovery as a painter and poet.
Inspired by our many conversations about the place of the arts in our society, and also, about the development of our spiritual identity, I started working on a series of new paintings. My partner and I were sharing a studio. My new art projects were based on extensive studies of supernatural beings from the area. I made a philosophical assumption that the spirits of the Pacific Northwest are a projection of a reality rather than a product of fantasy. Therefore, their role in the development of the Western psyche is crucial, regardless of the ethnic origins of the people inhabiting the land. In a sense, all North Americans must have become the focus of the attention of the local spirits. Such an assumption enabled me to bring Indian supernatural beings into the realm of the classic religious imagery of the West, similar to the Mediterranean gods.
I was feeling more and more revived as an artist and accepting of the consequences of my work, poverty. We moved from one studio to another renovating in exchange for low rent. The paintings, I produced in the process, are at the very top of my artistic abilities; the best paintings, I've ever done. I felt also that at the current stage of my artistic and spiritual development, it was necessary for me to collect all the poetry I had written, and edit it until it was finished. I continued with drawing the nude in pen-and-ink, and also, prepared the final edition of a Polish language poetry book for print with the feeling of great relief, as well as joy. |
