“I am 55 years old. I graduated from the Secondary School of Economics and spent the subsequent 20 years working as an accountant. A dozen or so years ago, due to a mental disease, I was forced to retire. In time, I started to feel a growing need to find a way through which to express my worldviews and emotions. At first, I tried my hand at clay sculpture onto which I later applied pastel colours. I mostly created religious images as well as votive figurines characteristic of uncivilised cultures. Some time ago, I was drawn to painting and its inherent manipulation of colour. My colourful pictures allow me to comment on the reality as I see it, express my emotions. I enjoy colours, not necessarily bright but always expressive – especially blues and reds. I like to paint scenes verging on the fantastic, emphasising the grotesqueness of the world, the flaws of human nature.
Totem
“Totem” is a sculpted figurine of an imaginary god. It is fairly small, the height of an unsharpened pencil. The figurine is rife with colour. It is made of clay but has not been fired. A variety of additional elements have been attached or glued on to the clay surface, e.g. doll arms, parts of toys, a small fan, pieces of cloth and fabric. The figurine is vaguely human-shaped, a fan has been glued to the top of the head. The face has been painted with visible facial hair, three teeth, large blue eyes contoured with black lines, green triple-eyebrows and a green triangular pattern on the forehead. The figure is clothed in a colourful dress sewn together from flowery and patterned pieces of cloth. The arms are yellow. A green and yellow woven scarf hangs around the neck. Some petals from an artificial flower have been additionally pinned on the skirt.
Two figures
The painting of two figures is small, the size of a sheet of paper. It is in colour but the number of colours used is very limited. Approximately two thirds of the painting are simply the background pattern of four colours, respectively from the top: yellow, orange, bright red and dark red. The choice of colours seems to suggest a sunset although the sun itself is not shown. The bottom part of the painting is a stretch of black, uneven ground, possibly a small hill, with two tiny, white figures – a man and a woman - standing on the surface. The figures are proportionate and anatomically accurate, separated by four black tree trunks with only a handful of short branches here and there. The author left a small, billowy smudge on the first tree from the left, most likely in an attempt to signify the tree’s crown. The whole work is simplistic, uncomplicated, dominated by the two glaringly white figures.
