The painting showing a square waterfall against the background of a huge pit was created in the period when I was looking for expression in the way of applying paint, started by a pencil sketch made in 2013. Well, while making this sketch with slightly negligent lines, drawing it in the direction which is assigned to me by right-handedness, I was surprised to notice that the drawing “came to life giving the impression of moving”. I knew this effect not only from previously seen pencil works or from the history of painting (e.g. impressionism), but to know something and to understand this are two different things, even different states of mind. Then I realized that expression can come not only from the topic and form of work, but also from the nature of using a given tool. I began to care about a kind of nervousness of the line so that the viewer would feel that the work was created in emotional turmoil. Since I made the lines diagonally, later, in oil, I decided to adapt this method and several pictures were created in this style, including the waterfall in question, which was the first I ever painted. To this day, I attach great importance to the method of applying the paint and, most likely, there will be more changes ahead of me. The topic itself did not come out of nowhere because there is an element that constantly appears in my head, namely a huge, flat surface, implicitly concrete, with withered and sometimes scarred stumps that were once trees. The first picture where such a thing appeared was a large pit stretching towards the horizon above which two, scared and losing feathers birds were flying. The side planes were covered with the mentioned dead trees. The painting was in turquoise tones. Some time later I thought, why not do something similar while looking at the chasm perpendicular from one of the shores? As the bottom itself seemed quite boring to me, the main topic appeared, i.e. the waterfall, but one from which the water was to be drawn from out of nowhere. Why a waterfall? I do not know. Why is this? I don’t know either. I just found it interesting. During the “visualization of the waterfall” there was a noise of falling water, which in turn reminded me of gliding, majestically pushed by the wind clouds, and thus I considered the clouds a necessary element of this work. I put the lighting at the back, quite low. However, I quickly felt the urge to break the calm sound and the scenery with a contrasting, as yet undefined scream or drama. It was then that the seed of the scene was created, in which the boat was originally supposed to be, and its inevitable end was marked by the waterfall line. I was ready to start working, but decided that the concept needed to be changed. So a man appeared on the rowless or steerless boat, and in the foreground I added another, screaming, aware of the future tragedy. The figure on the boat raised my hand in an unspecified gesture, and the screaming person seemed inappropriate to me, so I hid it behind my kind of architectural development, but still retained the situation awareness features. It all arose in my head, and then I started painting. I do not want to describe more, so as not to spoil the intellectual fun in the guesses of watching viewers. Questions remain: Does the person on the boat calmly come to terms with his fate? Is he waving his hand in despair or is he just calling out to say goodbye to the man in the foreground for the last time in his life? Who is each of the characters? Are the person on the boat and the other person the same persona, but perhaps different age? Is one of them an image of the other? Which one? Are we dealing with an image of conscience? Perhaps feeling guilty? Or is it a game between the temporal and the mystical worlds? I leave these and many other questions and answers to the audience and their individual states of mind. It only remains for me to add that this work will have a version where I will probably keep the original idea of a lonely boat, whose fate is marked by the edge of the abyss, or maybe …?
