BEATA BĘDKOWSKA
„JUST LIKE LIFE”
Is painting part of our life? - From an encyclopedic perspective, it is. Is it life itself? – There are some who can affirm that it is. Their household names are usually better known than the works they were built on. The legend of Picasso, Dali, or Van Gogh has obscured the need to commune with daily aesthetic and spiritual impressions, the source of which is contact with painting. Thanks to the internet we are able to bring up Guernica with a single click, which is why we no longer need anything that is less popular, less prestigious, and let alone cheaper. Underlying this belief is lack of spiritual sensitivity as well as sinking into mental torpor, which is being deepened by globalist propaganda. This philosophy of a stingy parvenu impoverishes our mind, making it incapable of exchanging thoughts with an artist – a fellow creature, a neighbour; the artist who is being underestimated by our overblown ego. After all, our finger, or rather the key it presses, makes us believe that we conduct a conversation with Picasso, so why should we bother about some young artist, not shown by such TV stations as TVP – Kultura or even Polsat ? Is there any point in adopting the other person's sensitivity if we are able to earn money without it? Then what do we need art for? It seems that “people-pockets” might consider it dubious or even unprofitable. We tend to forget that art does not exist in mass media. It lives on among us and it is only its daily “pulse”, its direct “touch” which helps us grasp its essence.
When I saw Beata Będkowska's paintings on the internet, I wasn't able to fully feel the female whisper which emerges from them, the whisper which is delicate, modest and full of intimate grace. It is only in the painter's own flat where her works unveil their true identity. The paintings describe a variety of soul states across different climates and times of the day, without resorting to big words or pompous expressions. The young painter's works do not swagger about sophisticated solutions which usually guarantee media hype. They are far from creating media sensation. It is rather a cicada humming sensation that they tend to be closer to. Shock or scandal, which guarantees high audience figures within a short period of time, is alien to the author of the works. Beata's paintings are not “like on TV”. They are just like life. Talking quietly about common, ordinary things, the paintings make us believe that we might find them unusual and extraordinary, whereas weirdness ceases to be unique and attractive. Nothing but the paint mark and brush stroke make us realize the role that painting plays in our everyday existence, making it brighter and helping us struggle with loneliness, this sense of solitude we experience amidst the emptiness of a crowded supermarket.
Piotr Szmitke
translated by: Iwona Mrozińska