About the Artist
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1. Embryonic Stage - PRACTICE PANELS 2. Spring of my Life - DEVELOPING A STYLE 3. Summer of my Life - WITHOUT AN END IN MIND 4. Fall of my Life - BEAUTY IN A BLEAK WORLD 5. Winter of my Life - ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM, A TOOL FOR HEALING |
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PRACTICE PANELS:
Danuta Sawicki was born in 1947 in Sudbury, Ontario and is the daughter of a
Polish immigrant family with 7 siblings. She began drawing and painting
at an early age and is completely self-taught inspired early on by an
influential high-school teacher. She readily admits the strong influence
of Canada's Group of Seven and the French impressionists in her early
works. With very little money and a strong desire to paint Danuta cut
sheets of masonite into practice panels and after experimenting with
water colours and oils chose acrylics as her medium of choice. In the
early 70's, while supporting her husband attending university, Danuta
committed all of her extra time to drawing and developing ideas for
paintings based on actual scenery and images of interest. The hundreds
of practice panels evolved into her developing her own style.
DEVELOPING HER OWN STYLE: Following her husband to his first teaching position in Geraldton, Ontario, Danuta broke into her own style of painting greatly affected by the power of her new environment in Canada's northland. The intensity of northern nature, the changing mood of the landscape and her love of the far north greatly influenced her development. From 1972 to 1977 Danuta produced many canvasses demonstrating her distinctive impressions of northern scenes. Also during this exciting time of personal growth she gave birth to her two sons in 1973 and 1977 respectively. In order to dedicate her energy to her new family, Danuta painted sporadically until the mid 80's. She was to develop a totally new style of painting when she picked up the artists brush again in 1986. Danuta was to exhibit and sell her work at the University of Waterloo, the Royal Ontario Museum in Thunder Bay, Geraldton and Barrie, Ontario. WITHOUT AN END IN MIND: Danuta put all her energies into producing a new body of work when she was granted the opportunity for a 'one-woman' art show in 1986. At this point Danuta produced paintings from memory, without sketching first, to allow her to portray impressions and feelings, rather than details. An expression of the artist through the art, with no end in mind, resulted in ideas that were often surprising. During this considerable stage of growth Danuta exhibited and sold her work at the Simcoe Gallery in Cookstown, followed by exhibits in a variety of Toronto venues including the O'Keefe Centre. She was to leave this stage of her artistic development until a significant life-changing event occurred in early 2007. BEAUTY IN A BLEAK WORLD: After a 20-year hiatus from her art, Danuta was to receive a 'wake-up' call in the form of an early-stage cancer diagnosis in early 2007. The desire to paint emerged with full vigour. The walls of her soon-to-be retirement home became her new canvas culminating in all sorts of new expressions and artistic experiences. The urgency to create produced a series of large wall art pieces where beauty could be fully expressed in a bleak world of physical deterioration resulting from surgery, chemotherapy and radiation. With a positive attitude and self-directed discipline Danuta moved toward her next phase of work. ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM - A TOOL FOR HEALING: At the age of 60, in the ‘winter’ of her life, Danuta’s future is truly bright! Recently retired from her job as a municipal employee she moves forward to painting as a tool for healing. With newfound strength and youthful enthusiasm, Danuta picks up her paintbrushes once again to openly express her feelings free from any outside expectations or time limitations granting art lovers the opportunity to see the world through Danuta’s eyes as though looking through a window into another world. |
Acrylic
on Canvas Beckons Viewers
By Paul Peregal, Toronto. Curator Gary Biesinger inaugurated the newly appointed Simcoe Gallery on Sunday with a singular exhibit of paintings by artist Danuta Sawicki. A collection of small works, acrylic on canvas, executed with a frenetic and spontaneous energy, beckons the viewer to some transcendental realm where ethereal landscapes engage the psyche in a nocturnal dance of pulsating, swirling, rhythms, a maelstrom of boreal light in static whites, electric blues and iridescent crimsons. From canvas to canvas the eye is swept to the precipice of vertigo and would tumble to oblivion if not for a series of cotton candy clouds and marshmallow terrains to cushion our descent. Sawickis’ delirious visions of a mysterious Ontarian Hinterland were born of an exhaustive two-week painting bout. A wisp of Lawren Harris
threads a supernal weave through some of Sawickis’ landscapes,
while other less representational works are faintly reminiscent of Mark
Tobeys’ white-line “particles of energy” paintings.
- The Cookstown Advocate 1986. |