On January 31st, the opening to my latest art exhibition was held at Podduklianske gallery, Svidnik, Slovakia. The main focus was again on my art on animal skins. It was quite well attended, including by my father and step-mother as they came over for that and also my wife’s 50th birthday party. Because of her birthday, I dedicated the exhibition to her, entitling it ‘For Renata‘. That was a seriously hectic and chaotic week but it all went quite smoothly, ultimately. Here are my parents with some members of Tilters motorcycle club at the exhibition:
Simultaneously to (and lasting much later than) the exhibition, the gallery provided us with a large room in which we held a private party for both my close circle and my wife’s so we could celebrate her birthday. The day following we rented out a restaurant to host her family for a birthday meal but this was more for friends. It was an eclectic mix of people…
Here are some of the exhibited paintings, all of which are for sale:
Astronomy, acrylic on moufflon
Tsunami, acrylic on fallow deer
Ezekiel, oil on canvas
Svidnik, acrylic on albino wild boar
Carpathian Fish, acrylic on canvas
Two Muses, acrylic on canvas
50, acrylic on canvas (ironically for someone else’s 50th) – not available
Dominion, acrylic on wild boar
Trance, acrylic on fallow deer
Viva Che!, acrylic on canvas
Wolf Girl, acrylic on moufflon
And the pièce de résistance of the exhibition, a piece I’ve been working on (and scrubbing over and starting again) for a long time:
Spirit of the Tatry, oil on fallow deer. This is a huge painting.
Two of the paintings I don’t have photographs of and they’re currently being exhibited elsewhere as they won me second place in the regional art competition.
The exhibition also received a lot of press attention locally, with both newspapers covering it on two subsequent weeks:
I paint on skins as this part of the animal, hunted in the wilds of the Carpathian Mountains in Slovakia, is normally tossed aside as being worthless. I buy them already treated and, by painting on them, I hope to give the slain animal some semblance of immortality so that it isn’t just forgotten but can live on in a visual manner.
And, finally, here’s a photo which sums up why I held the exhibition in the first place:
