Shows keep painter busy

Andrew Raczynski has been on a bit of a roll lately. While his work is still on display at the Bookstore on Perron for its July group show (until it closes its run on Monday), he has just helped open a new exhibit at the CAVA Art Gallery in Edmonton’s French quarter.

This marks his first showing at the centre.

“This is a big step for me,” he said. “I’m excited about it and maybe a bit more relieved. I have undertaken a number of really interesting and demanding or challenging projects over the years.”

Raczynski likes to keep busy. Further proof of this is that he is also a member of the St. Albert Painters’ Guild and the Visual Arts Studio Association and that he says he makes a habit of regularly visiting Edmonton galleries, despite his Morinville home.

Artbeat is the name of his new exhibit, also featuring Jerry Berthelette, Jean-Baptiste Frantz and polymer multimedia artists Govrox Designs.

The local painter works in a mostly representational style using a variety of media, diverse interests in landscape, portraiture and still lifes.

According to his artist’s statement, the theme, to him, is synonymous with heartbeat as it represents the “life force within us that engages the mind, the heart, and the soul to choose what is true, good and beautiful – living each day to the fullest.”

“To me, they are one and the same,” he said. “In our culture, the arts are what we value the most when it comes right down to it. Art and ‘artbeat’ represents for me really what it is that’s inside of us and what makes us tick.”

What’s inside the artist, he says, is a passion for the garden and the great outdoors, among many other things. His contributions here feature local scenes that trumpet the diversity of our cultural heritage and the compelling landscapes of our region.

They are a strong sampling of 20 different acrylic and watercolour works that depict “how the world is a better place because of this engagement, whether at work or at play or in quiet contemplation, individually or in the relationships that are most important to us,” he said.

He’s especially pleased with a work that was inspired by Jasper Johns’ The Target, a work that Raczynski said “looks like a dartboard” with a top section that has flaps, which open up to reveal small sculptures. Raczynski’s Target 2015, after Jasper Johns borrows much of the original’s bull’s-eye symbolism but with potent difference of a political nature.

“I thought, ‘Oh my God! Why don’t I do – when you lift up the lid – the current situation in Canada’s political system?’ Whatever happened to honour in politics?” he mused, mentioning his disappointment with several politicians on the national scene.

Making statements like that in one’s art doesn’t often happen in shows such as this. Raczynski is encouraged that it will be well received by the viewers in south Edmonton.

“It’s going to be a heck of a show!” he said.