ARTIST STATEMENT

SHORT

Woman and Man. Woman and Woman. Man and Man. It doesn't really matter. It is always the same game. She wants to leave. He wants to stop her. She wants to stay. He is leaving. He met another woman. She runs to the other man. The are happy. They aren't happy. They live their life. Stop and count loudly over how many man/woman you run? This is my story. This is your story. This is everyone's story.

Slightly LONGER

I didn't think about any reference in the art before me. I just have a need to do those linocuts as they are. I knew exactly how they are supposed to look like. And I was straggling with them as long as they come to look as I wanted them to look. They are built by contrast-that what medium as linocut force, but they are also built by light. There is a poem by very famous Polish poet - Jan Twardowski. He is saying something like: I see you on the other site of the street. I see you-half. You passing me-half. I turned after you - half. You disappear - half.
When I read it first time it just knocked me. It's true and so obvious. We never see "the whole". Always only half.
From that halves we built our stories. Sometimes we don't even bother to try to see the other half. The other site. Not only of other person, but our own "other half".

My figures force to use the imagination. The shapes are realistic, but they leave a lot of space, where you need to "overpaint" what you see by your own experience. That's why some people find them "abstract". For the art people - they are very realistic. Almost photographic. "Normal" people sometimes cannot read them - especially in a large scale. So they hang in "figurative abstractionism". Somewhere in-between...

Very LONG

I didn't think about Rodin. I didn't even remember his sculpture, although I think I must seen it. One of my title is also "Hand of God", but with reference to the "Greek Zorba" by Nikos Kazantzakis - the book I was and still am fascinated by. There is a quote (actually I might just copy the whole book as a quote) saying about the man and woman. Woman always waiting, when she is 7, 17, 37 or 70 years old.  She always wants to be beautiful and treated as a queen. And the role of Man is give this to her. Not just to one woman. To every single woman in the world. God is playing with people - sometimes hiding something, sometimes putting just in front of the nose, but ate the same time making you blind. Like a game. You never know - if that's your turn/move or someone else is playing. Was it your choice or are you just a puppet.

I give titles, because title for me doesn't close anything, on the contrary - opens a lot of possibilities. It stimulates the brain, raises the desire to discover something. Pieces of discourses, poems, situations. - taken out of context pieces of life. I glue them to my art.
The man-model was my husband, Slawek. For woman figure I mostly use myself. Mainly because myself I know, myself I accept - and sometimes even like. I use myself as a model, because it's me, for whom happen all those strange things, which I couldn't explain otherwise than by art. I'm making art, because I wait; because I love; because I see; I'm making art, because I experience. Because pieces of fate connect and affect my life.
The world doesn't hurt me. It is adding to me - the piece of world - other moments that stay within me. Become main. I can see them through myself, change them into piece of art, I can see through them, I can show them to others. I can hand them out. I'm handing out myself and myself I'm getting back.

Anita Flejter