Picture Melody

We are talking; the sound of forest and water, the rustle of leaves, the splash of waves, the crunch of sand, the creak of snow.

With words we try to give fleeting phenomena materiality and tangibility; noise, rustling, splashing, crunching, creaking. In the language of everyday life such words facilitate our communication, their task is both to exchange information and to express the nature of the surrounding phenomena of our world. We have the impression that language can meet the challenge of capturing the diversity and complexity of what is around us. It simply cannot. Each of these words is essentially a crude sort of pick with which we try to break into the mysterious natural lands and places we are in.

Joanna Fodczuk says about her painting that it is an “internal landscape.” The reference to landscape is accurate and completely valid. Perhaps what's most surprising is that the painting may appear abstract at first glance. When we look closer and longer, we discover that the rhythms of shape, line, and color blend to create a tight and powerful impact. Their pedigree is undoubtedly in the diversity of the landscape—the landscape is not, after all, a stable model. Not only does the visual spectrum change, it also vibrates, shifts, smells, stimulates the senses; noise, rustling, splashing, crunching, creaking.

Let us look carefully at Joanna Fodczuk's non-depiction, because the artist manages to do something unexpected. I find in her paintings she connects in a spectacular way to the aural world—the sounds of our world also take on rhythm, melody and harmony, vibrating in waves that the artist's eye can “see.”

Joanna Fodczuk is a painter, but her work reveals an exceptional skill; she is a translator of sound into the language of the visual. See how the water rushes, watch the rustling of leaves.

Dariusz Głowacki, PhD, Poznan, Poland

Writer, publisher & lecturer on art & culture