" Young American " (Audie Murphy)

Artist Statement

The inspiration for my art, comes from what I see and experience in life. It is both dark and light, with barely a millimetre to separate them. I am captured by a moment in time, which I feel I must explore, for, I am a storyteller.
In a time of great fear and misunderstanding, when challenging the pathway that we are expected to follow, it is the last enclave of truth according to how I see it. I wish to make people consider a different path and to feel something from what create. Having built a large body of work during my lifetime, which I surround myself with, I feel nothing is complete until it has left my studio, when each artwork begins it’s own journey.
I work with a variety of materials, including bog oak (fossilized wood), which I collected from the fields of the Fens. It has, in my opinion, a special power that comes from it’s past. The natural colour of the wood is black, as it has laid in peat for thousands of years, until I came across it.
Other materials I use, are what people disregard, once loved but now cast aside. I re-work and produce a “Frankenstein” creation, then add layers of colour and gems, offering a reflective light that radiates from these works.
Currently I am focusing on “ The Untouchables ”, a series of figures under glass domes, being ‘isolated’, for what they represent.

Recently I have decided to offer little explanation for my artworks, as I feel it is for the viewer to decide what the story is, through how they feel, therefore creating a story from what I offer them. The art piece is simply the key to open how we see each other and how others see us. Beauty is everywhere, you just have to focus a little differently to appreciate it.
I feel that my life as an artist has been a walk among the brightest and the darkest of my thoughts and creations, so, feeling blessed, but also cursed …!

Andru Fijalkowski