Artist Statement
My oeuvre is a reflection of the sense of transcendent quiet experienced only in the natural world. The primary subject is the power of earthly beauty, whether it is a study of the textures and patterns of the metropolis such as Urban Patterns. Other themes include landscape and natural form, the icy beauty of ocean and lakes, or a recording of our often-destructive mark on the earth such as the Plastic photographs. In every series, I engage with the constantly changing sense of light, form, and patterning found in the flora, sky, sun, snow, ice, the ocean, land, rock, and sand.
I am interested not only in capturing my own intimate experience, but also requiring my viewer to reimagine his or her relationship with the natural world. Perhaps, at first, there is an attraction to the crystalline echoing of light and land, water and texture, but then to the independent dance of nature, the choreography of wind, a place that exists without humankind, a simplicity of great ecological and spiritual significance.
My formal training includes photography but also painting, stone, and woodworking as well as photography. These disciplines have allowed me to approach surface, material, and pattern in a new and engaging way, displaying the diversity of the natural world in my photographic work depicting an encounter of self with beauty. I wish to achieve a sense not only not only of monumental scale but also the power of natural beauty and form, and to this I have increasingly focused on the large prints series using a digital medium format Hasselblad.
The great diversity of climates, flora and fauna and landscapes is a source of constant inspiration. From the wintery environs of Norway to the oceanic beauty of San Francisco, Mexico, or the robust sunshine of the Mediterranean island Mallorca my outlook and technique is constantly changing and evolving. Today, I work and live on Oahu Island, Hawaii, where local culture emphasizes the value of the natural world, and the beauty and power of the ocean.
Today, much of the work bears witness to the enduring strength of nature, and as such has an underlying critical current, allowing the viewer to engage in self-awareness, to disengage from media, from the demand of the 24-hour device.
Within these monumental sky views, landscapes and sea images, I seek an expressive simplicity that reflects an intimacy of experience, a communing with nature, perhaps a contemporary experience of the artistic tradition of the natural sublime.
The schematic simplicity of the compositions is linked in some ways to my own early experiences, such as my time as a child growing up post communist Poland when resources and opportunities were scarce. One had to make do and create with whatever resources were available. Without distractions or too many choices, my journey began quite simply with my first camera a 35 mm Kiev camera and home dark room. This simplicity has carried through to my mature practice that seeks to communicate a refined, contemplative sensibility of the natural world while also offering a deeper level of meaning, such as the importance of nature to artistic creativity, humankind’s well being and sense of self, as well as our increasingly alienated relationship to the earth. Today my practice expands on these ideas of distillation and reconfiguration, specifically in my Plastics landscape series, and the Urban Patterns, where elemental configurations and pairings make for a new vision of the observable world.