What moves me in this scene is its contrast and energy: there is the tension of the body suspended in midair, and among the figures. Between the athlete and his onlookers. He leaps; they remain still. He is fully absorbed and in motion, effort, and excitement. They, by contrast, radiate indifference. His muscles strain, his veins rise to the surface, and his arms are flung wide; they stand zipped to the neck, hands folded behind their backs or buried in coat pockets.

Two postures. Two tempos of life.

Perhaps they were once where he is now?

Jump 1

This trail leads up Śnieżnik (Snowy) Mountain.

In this painting, the shapes blur and change. Boundaries are held for a moment, then begin to dissolve. If I drink from a mountain stream, does the stream become part of me, or do I become part of it?

Snowy Mountain (Śnieżnik / Glatzer Schneeberg)

The image I based this painting on was taken during a trip to Lower Silesia, near Kłodzko Valley, a place I’m very fond of. My family was in the town of Srebrna Góra (literally, Silver Mountain). We climbed to the top of Forteczna Mountain and reached a site where the Prussians built a massive mountain fortress, after their victory over Austria and the annexation of Silesia.

The sun was low, just above the ridge of the neighboring mountain range.

My child, Pola, climbed a tree and hung there, watching the last light of the day, while holding close to the trunk. The sun was very low, and in a few minutes, it would be gone entirely, its orange disc hidden behind the mountain. Yet where we were, light was caught in the leaves and branches, still holding their color away from the approaching darkness. But the valley below was already cloaked in it. There, night and cold had already spread, and were rising up toward us.

Holding the tree and pressed close to another living presence, another being of this world, the girl watches the final rays and colors of a day. She is viewing an ending. It is a moment of transition, a threshold, and as close as we can come to tracing a finger over the dividing line between day and night, or light and dark. It matters most that in this painting, the sun’s disc touches the edge of the mountain.

It comes forward, pushes into the foreground, and even burns through a branch of the tree. To me, the painting is elegiac; it represents a new generation, in close contact with nature, watching the final moments of light in this world, just before the oncoming darkness of harsher times brought on by the human inhabitants of the earth.

Sunset Over Silver Mountain

To me, this painting is about crossing boundaries. It is about growing into social roles, cultural roles, and gender as a cultural construct.

  
The only human-made element in this scene is the fence (or rather fences; you can see more of them standing in the distance). Everything else is nature, or put differently, everything else is natural. What is unnatural are the boundaries imposed by humans. Or the boundaries we try to impose, by carving into the natural world. Yet, we should admit that all of them are arbitrary, and artificial or subjective. And in the end, they have to fall and vanish as soon as no one is left to reinforce them. To confirm their presence and their significance. Just like the wooden fences cutting across the meadows, so too will the boundaries disappear, eventually fall and rot away. All it takes is time, and no one to repair them.

  
For now, we see two young girls, but it is clear that one is somewhat older than the other. And their appearance as well as their clothing are differ distinctly. The younger one, dressed in light colors, is still on “this side” of the fence; she clearly fits, in terms of her clothing, into traditional cultural gender norms. The older girl, dressed in darker clothing, is already more on the “further” side of the fence/boundary; she is dressed in a more “masculine” style, breaking a cultural pattern. (Most likely, she’s simply dressed the way she wants to be.) The older girl also has a more relaxed posture, and gives the impression of not being overly concerned, as if she’s already crossed over. Perhaps she’s inviting the younger one? Maybe she’s telling her a story? The younger girl has taken a step and climbed up onto the fence. We don’t know if she’ll cross it, if she’ll follow a similar path, or if she’s just testing the other side for a moment before returning to where she came from. These are the thoughts I have when I look at this painting.

Crossing the Line / Two Girls on the Fence 

I wanted to paint something as simple as possible, like the act of drawing a triangle on a clean, white sheet of paper. Just three figures and a stretch of beach.

Is this triangle isosceles?

Beach Triangle 1

The painting was based on a photo from the Polish digital archives, captioned “Rocky beach. Holidaymakers visible.” The year is 1935\. The photo is labeled “Author Unknown,” yet attributed to the archive of Henryk Poddębski, a landscape photographer whose fieldwork spanned World War I and the interwar period, but no further. He died in 1945, aged 55, in the Vaihingen concentration camp.

Was it he who took this picture? It’s hard to say for certain, though we may wish to.

Every time I paint people from Poland in the 1920s and 30s, I keep thinking about how 1939 is just around the corner, and that by 1946, some of them may have lost their lives, like Henryk Poddębski.

I choose beach scenes or photos taken in the mountains, which include “holidaymakers,” on vacations together. That only intensifies the contrast between those calm, carefree moments of rest and communing with nature, and what was slowly encroaching.

In this case, the year is 1935, so beyond the western border, the Nazis are already in power.

But that’s just one layer of it. Something lingers in the back of my mind, which I’d compare to a backdrop: I can’t completely escape it, but at the same time, I try to look at this moment with as much removal as possible, keeping everything around it separate. I try to lift just this one moment out of context.

A restless sea crashes in white foam against a rocky shore, where a great body of water meets the land. The people came for a moment, to pose for a photograph. Most likely they’d never been here before, and likely never returned again. The ground they’re standing on is unstable, the rocks are smooth and slippery. The figures have to keep their balance. We don’t know who they are. In truth, we know nothing about them, and it is likely that no one alive today remembers anything about them, either. The man is standing on a large stone, his hand resting on the woman’s shoulder. And Is he trying to steady himself? Or is it a posed gesture that speaks of their relationship?

What intrigues me most is the dynamic between the people I find in these photos.

And a triangle always holds more tension than a pair (or a square made of two pairs).

I wonder who they are to one another, and I paint stories to answer that question.

I know I’ll never find out what really happened. I am glad not to know.

Beach Triangle 2 / Sea of Red

This scene feels otherworldly and dreamlike to me. Three women lie in bathing suits on a green patch of ground. There is nothing else: there is no trace of the rest of the world, and they appear completely removed from context. Is it because they are asleep, each deep in her own subconscious world? They might simply be napping on a beach or could just as well be lying on the surface of a distant planet. The sense of strangeness and unease is heightened by the shades of color on their bodies. Each is distinct; each has her own hue. You can tell they are close, even very close. One woman’s head rests on the other’s hips. The third woman’s face is completely hidden. One may wonder when their sleep will end: in a minute, in an hour? Maybe never? Are they simply napping, or in oblivion? The longer you look, the harder it is to say. Will the other side they’ve crossed into let go of them easily? I keep writing in questions. And here, the silence is the only answer I feel I can trust.

Beach Triangle 3 / Three Sleeping Figures

To me, this painting is about two things, namely two layers of meaning. First, it’s about an individual in relation to a group. A group can do a lot for one person, even catch him as he falls. The painting captures that moment of suspension, which is both literal and emotional, between falling and being caught. It resembles many rituals across cultures where trust and interdependence are enacted. In these moments, people place themselves and their safety in the hands of others as a profound affirmation of communal support, or belief in others. Trust can be shown in group ceremonies where a person is carried, or caught, like in traditional group dances, or even crowd surfing at concerts. They rely on collective action. When I look at the man who is so unnaturally high in the air, I see peace and feel at peace. The painting is meant to remind us that sometimes, true elevation is only possible through the hands of others, and with the help of others.

Jump 3 / The Flying Horseman

The title reflects my associations with the Polish village of Glinno, at the foot of the Owl Mountains. For several years, I went there to disconnect from everything else. I’d arrive and turn off my phone, and then the world outside that small valley would by silenced by one of the quietest places I know. Almost no one lives in Glinno anymore, and hardly anyone visits a place on the way to nowhere. The border between night and day drifts in slowly; what is meant to arrive will come in its own time. The need to speed anything up or slow anything down was never written into this scene.

There is a solitary house, completely surrounded by trees and bushes that form a backdrop and at the same time enclose it, to where it looks as though the house is emerging from them, or that the trees have pulled back to reveal it. Nearby, a stream seeps in and out of the dark canopy of plants, and the water gleams in the last light of the sky; in a moment, it flows onward, back into the same shadows of rich greenery.

And that’s as it should be. One thing slowly becomes another, in the same rhythm and pace as it should: calmly, safely. In this house, someone else is preparing for the coming night. Nothing moves, except the slow drift of water and a thread of smoke. All unconcerned to find themselves cut off from the rest of the world.

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Jan Kubisa

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