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Painting of the Day: A New Series of Posts About Bartosz Beda’s Paintings

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  • Post last modified:August 12, 2021
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Painting of the Day Series: New Post Every Monday

The goal of Painting of the Day series is to bring my art, paintings, portrait, sculptures to my followers like you. The intention is to explain as much about the painting in each post as possible.

Some paintings that I plan to write about are already being housed in private or public collections. Looking back at my body of works, I feel that I didn’t take enough time to talk about each and every individual work and express what these paintings represent. We can argue that the works speak for themselves, but sometimes without proper guidance and hints of suggestion, our interpretation and understanding of the work can go in a different direction than originally intended.

I hope you will enjoy my new Painting of the Day series. Please feel free to email me at info@bartoszbeda.com with questions you may have about my paintings.

What is painting?

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I recently came across an article on Artsy.net titled “Americans Say They’d Rather Have Artistic Hobbies Than a Netflix Subscription,” which to me, as an artist who spends extensive time in the studio, makes no sense. I think of art as something brimming with unfulfilled potential that often is depressing and full of fury, as well as something that causes a great amount of moral and mental anguish.
 
Let’s look at the word “painting” without necessarily following the dictionary definition that focuses solely on the use of paint. As a person for whom English is a second language, I’ve always had an interest in words and their meaning, as well as their translation to Polish or other languages to see how these words change and sometimes even lose their meaning in translation.

Painting is Pain, and Pain is in Painting

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When I look at the word “painting,” the first thing I see is “pain,” and suddenly everything makes sense. This diminishes all my potential associations of painting with words like hobby, pleasure, and goodness and instead brings new meaning to one’s understanding of what art is about.
 
The Polish word for “painting” is “obraz.” When I look at this word, if I were to add an “a” at the end of the word, the meaning would change to “offend.”

Painting is an Internal Struggle

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As an artist who spends most of his time in the studio, I cannot help but think of art as an internal and external struggle that has nothing to do with pleasure or relaxation. I don’t know how I would feel about art if I would do it only as a hobby. I still would need a lot of wine and whiskey to make me feel happy.

My favorite painter of all time, Mark Rothko, committed suicide at the age of sixty-seven partly because of his internal struggles with painting and art. I often feel similarly. You need some sort of pain, whether it’s physical, physiological, or internal, in order to create. It is as if having pain is the only way for one’s painting to portray feelings to the external world. Painting can also be destructive at times.

What is a “painting of the day?”

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It is a very odd phrase that does not make much sense if there is little explanation behind it. It means what it means at face value, but I try to bring more meaning to it than it has by itself.
 
Every week, I plan to bring about a new blog post discussing one of the paintings that I have created over the course of the last ten years. I will call this series of blog posts Painting of the Day and explore what each and every painting is about in depth.
 
I want my viewers and followers to better understand the reasoning and process I have behind each painting. I hope that is achievable. It is important for me as the artist, but also for you as a viewer to take time to understand the artwork. When the notifications on our phones take over all our attention in today’s world, it is important to take time to delve deeper into what we like and value in art.

Why do artists do a painting a day?

The main motivation for most artists is to paint daily, though creating an entire painting in a day is optional. I have done that many times, but the speed at which one finishes a painting is not relevant. What matters is the time you spend painting. In essence, it is not always the act of painting that matters, but the time you spend in front of the canvas. I need to remind myself of this all the time.
 
I am passionate and excited about painting, but the majority of my studio sessions are spent in a fight against time, in a struggle to find motivation or an urge to keep up with the same painting for a while to see the results I desire. That desire is a reflective and meditative stage in the process of producing artwork.

Painting of the Day Series: New Post Every Monday

The goal of this series is to bring my art to my followers like you. The intention is to explain as much about the painting in each post as possible.

Some paintings that I plan to write about are already being housed in private or public collections. Looking back at my body of works, I feel that I didn’t take enough time to talk about each and every individual work and express what these paintings represent. We can argue that the works speak for themselves, but sometimes without proper guidance and hints of suggestion, our interpretation and understanding of the work can go in a different direction than originally intended.

I hope you will enjoy my new Painting of the Day series. Please feel free to email me at info@bartoszbeda.com with questions you may have about my paintings.