BOZENA DUSSEAU - LABEDZ
ACADEMY OF FINE ARTS/CRACOW, 1984, POLAND
About her work:
" I can't paint a portrait of someone who I can't open like a tin of fish .."(Oskar Kokoschka)
A portrait offers us an individual gift every time - possibility to enter a portrayed subject
accompanied by an outstanding guide - the artist himself who is believed ""to see more
than anyone.
" Expression of a human body is of special meaning. The problem of showing expression
in art is getting complicated since we deal there with expressing a psychic state of
characters we act simultaneously with expressing the author's psychic conditions.
And thus we are in contact with born heroes' and their creator's psyche. Neither science
nor psychology can answer a question:
" What is man? " , because they make use of description and analysis methods.
Nobody but an artist can answer it since he uses his own intuition.
According to Fromm, a man through gaining more and more rule over the nature
becomes more and more lonely and isolated in his world. But he still has a chance
to develop his own freedom and authenticity. Yet he most often sacrifices his
own personality while trying to conform with the others by means of artificial
ways in order not to loose touch with the community.
Only creativity can bring man's freedom back to him thanks to his experiencing
his own personality as a complete whole. Haste of life, everyday troubles are
the factors which do not favour developments
of an individual, sincere and frank interpersonal contact, unconventional way of life.
Conformity seems an easier alternative as the way of living than being true to oneself,
similarly to passive consumption which becomes the opposite of self actualisation in
various spheres of life and art.
Thus painting is important as an offer of a dialogue for a man with other people and
also with the world and it can be the way of manifesting one's own uniqueness
Leonardo da Vinci in his hymn of praise to painting wrote:
"…..if an artist chooses to see beauty and to adore it, he is mighty
to evoke it himself but if he chooses to see frightening monsters, silly and good to laugh
at and feel pity for - he is their master and God"
