signature p.d.: YERKA 23
Every painting begins in my mind. Sometimes it is a memory of a smell, a crumb of a dream, a sentence in a long-read book. If I don't hold it, it escapes, disappears, gets lost in the meanders of memory and I have to, with incomparable effort, find, reconstruct, attract - a faint trace of an image, a shape, a space.
I stand on the hollow platform of imagination and look out for the right colors, objects and tensions between them. The maze is endless, full of blind branches and unpleasant surprises.
Suddenly the right item falls from the swampy ceiling - there it is! It pulls another one, everything finds its way into place - I can start sketching....
Jacek Yerka
Jacek Yerka (Torun 1952, lives near Torun) graduated in 1976 from the Faculty of Fine Arts at the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Torun. He specialized in graphic arts. In the first years after graduation, he exhibited posters, including at the Biennale of Polish Poster in Katowice in 1977 and 1979, international biennials in Lahti and Warsaw, and others. Since 1980 he has devoted himself entirely to painting. Relying on a precise pictorial technique modeled on the old masters (Jan van Eyck, Hieronymus Bosch), but above all on his own boundless imagination, he creates surreal compositions, especially admired by lovers of fantasy in all varieties. He inspired, for example, fantasy author Harlan Ellison to write 30 short stories, which, along with Yerka's paintings, made up the publication titled. "Mind Fields." The same American publishing house "Morpheus International" published the album "The Fantastic Art of Jacek Yerka". In 1995 the artist was awarded the prestigious World Fantasy Award for best artist. He exhibits at home and abroad (in Germany, France, the USA and others), being a respected representative of the fantastic art trend. He collaborated in the production of the American film "Strawberry Fields", where the images were to be accompanied by Beatles music.