I myself am surprised by this extraordinary phenomenon… Anyway, nothing like it had happened to me before. From early childhood creation was to me a privilege, a natural gesture and passion that distinguished me from others. Then it became a vital breath which gave my existence a meaning. I feel like something slowly emerging appeared on my life path. It’s not an obses- sion, not even a necessity, but something that matures on its own in silence, and something that happens involuntarily – even a kind of summary, indeed. And without notice, without authorization, it becomes an autonomous composition of the whole work, like a newly discovered galaxy, which lasted after all, but I could have not realized had existed. I think I can call it the composition and not the idea, because this process of creation is similar to the birth of a painting, drawing or sculpture and in addition this kind of labor comes at a time when an already mastered workshop and clarity of a provided thought do not ask for appreciation.
This must be a reaction to a string of already forgotten events. A distant echo of those written images resting in the shadows. Perhaps memories of the postwar damage explain it at least partially. But no thing just happens – for no reason, easily, and for nothing. It is difficult to avoid persistently recurring, yet still fresh, painful, sense-wounding impressions in the memory.
But memories that one might call magical are also overflowing. Commonness of the mentioned image does not diminish the strength and excessively large impression of beauty experienced from ordinary flowers. Subconsciousness have set the boundary between sadness and joy and is deftly drawing attention to the positive images. How can one forget that seductive smell of evening stocks and forget-me-nots… Or this narrow stream winding in the wonderfully green grass meadow. Oh, that crystal clear water with tiny fish, tadpoles… How to replace the unique, sweet, intense, almost sticky smell of old roadside linden along Częstochowska Street… The evening is hot, sluggish beattles rush from tree to tree like spaceships as if this strange, chaotic behaviour was a way of accompanying the suffering procession heading towards Jasna Góra. I’m a little numb spectator who sud- denly, as in an illuminated window, reveals the magnitude of human suffering, disease, disability and unfulfilled hopes. And all is gathered together on this stage of the theater of life in a slowly gathering dusk, and in this unexpected and slowly advancing procession of: the elderly, the handicapped, children, women. Wagons full of seriously ill pilgrims, carefully arranged on straw, laboriously climb uphill.
Image of sadness and tears suddenly returns. It’s mom, she tells the story of two brothers terrified by the bombings. To this day, these wounds could not be healed. Life slowly absorbed by grim memories. The whirl of everyday pushed the visions deeper in the shadow. They could’ve finally passed to history and put themselves modestly in the corner of events as bare facts, like some exhausted race animals.
Eternal Love painting was created in 1985. Call it the result of a thought, call it a subconscious escape from my past years, but it is more like an echo of delight when during one winter evening in the church square in a snow-covered Wieluń I noticed how vast and beautiful the sky was.
I used to go out with my schoolmates late in the evening. I was 8-9 years old. The winter view was enchanting, beauty of the city – almost surreal. The full moon lit safely those tiny houses nestled in the snow. We threw ourselves in fluffy snow to make snow angels. Marks that we left in the moon-lit, snow-covered, huge square looked like a flock of some unknown taking-off birds. Delighted with the result, with arms wide open I flopped in the fluffy snow again. Suddenly I felt like I hang in a vacuum, held in a zero gravity between earth and sky. Amazed, I looked at the surrounding vault. I was impressed by the sight of stars against the dark velvet sky. I could see them so clearly. I could recognize the constellations. The stars shone clear, and the moon lit carefully arranged tiny clouds as if using this perspective was supposed to visualize the magnitude of the perceived space.
I felt like pollen.
Not only did I realize how huge and beautiful the sky was, but also how insignificant I was. I could feel silence as if everything suddenly went silent, I felt some unspoken, ultimate harmony. I had the impression that each particle of which I was made felt the cosmic order and arranged themselves obediently, like iron filings around a magnet. I felt as if something important had happened, like I realized that from that moment I could look at the stars differently. At the same time, I was delighted and deeply concerned in a way I never experienced before. I became light and transparent as a delicate woven silk voile. I still remember the moment. It must have been yesterday, just a moment ago…
I always wanted to do something for Wielunians. Being one the very first, my father participated in reconstruction of the city, yet here I experienced the most beautiful moments of homeliness. Here, too, I witnessed some joy with family and friends, as well as sorrows and tragedies that accompanied us. Here I saw birth, illness, suffering and death.
The project ETERNAL LOVE matured slowly, as if waiting for the right moment, when scattered elements suddenly merge into a complete unity. Bygone facts have been covered with dust of everyday life. In September 2003, the President solemnly unveiled a plaque commemorating the painful episode of the attack on the city in 1939. A period has been closed. The history has written a missing event page and a new, wide open one is waiting for other important events. Perhaps, in a run of cyclically recurring events, Wieluń will someday adopt a new form of its old Renaissance splendor. After all, the history of the region and the city dates back from 900 years…
I remember that one of the most difficult works from my childhood was to recreate the life of Copernicus, which I had to do for one of Wielunian schools. These were my first steps in already praised drawing skills. Was it fate, which by successive events wanted to draw my attention to an unrecognized area? Show that I should raise my head more often. After all, a few years later, we have become the first generation in human history that has seen the Earth from space.
Perhaps we, humans, the delightful space dust, should look higher to see the vastness of space, the stars’ harmony, unity of the universe and peace sent by the majestic skies.
Perhaps this example of a small, so painfully experienced town will make us and others more clearly and distinctly aware that revenge can be abandoned, that memory of the tragic events can be sublimated in the form of intelligent search for harmony, tolerance and understanding for future generations, making words of Copernicus‚ ‘What is more beautiful than the sky embracing all that is beautiful’.