Art and I
Anna Lesiczka
17th March 2023
Art and I
When I was fifteen I borrowed my mom’s digital camera and went for a trip to the Balkans. It was stolen from me at the end of the trip together with two thousand photos inside. I didn’t take proper care of it, so everything got lost. It was the situation that caused the distance between me and photo taking for a long time. Or it was the lack of control of changing the perspectives I see.
The first profession I wanted to have was a painter. I guess I’ve been fascinated with the possibilities to modify reality. Therefore I only wanted to paint, and I have never had a vision that my paintings would be sold and hung on particular walls inside frames. When someone wanted to have it, I was always happy. It meant that it would probably become visible as a decoration. Every wall in my family house is filled with my paintings. My aunts, uncles, grandparents, and friends ask me if I painted something new. It takes a lot to be passive while knowing how happy they would be if I paint as often as before.
After I said that I like when my work is a part of a human’s interior, somebody asked me: “So do you think that painting is a decoration?” At that moment it seemed like making decorations was something low. I think that whether a work becomes a decoration is up to the person who owns it. For me, painting was a way of telling a story.
I started writing a journal when I was nine years old and more or less I have kept it until now. But I have developed different ways and paths to preserve the memories. I moved from writing text to mediums that are more open.
I shared a courtyard with The National Polish Theatre Academy for three years. Sometimes I watched their performances once or twice a week. I could go there after dinner when I felt lonely and didn’t have anything more to do. Together with my roommate, we were observing the chatting and smoking actors from our window on the fourth floor.
I look through the windows when I walk. I compare houses, buildings, and their interiors whether they are observed or imagined. More often I take things from the general landscape to my private area, than I leave my own things in the common spaces. But I have been practicing the other way around. I place my work randomly in the city and don’t look back.
The dream to study film directing came to me when I was twelve. It started with a TV commercial I saw. It showed a boy who liked cars and as an adult became a mechanic. They said that what you do and like in your kindergarten shapes your future. I just had a crisis - I had to give up on my precious life plan career to be an interior designer (because of the lack of sympathy towards measurements). So thinking back about my time in kindergarten and finding my new destiny, I decided that I will now become absolutely obsessed with movies. Just because I used to watch a lot of television, a lot of my world appeared and disappeared there.
Sometimes, something happens and I can’t forget. Sometimes it doesn’t seem to have any particular meaning. I can’t describe it, so I’ll go around. I have never found what I was looking for. The collection stays with me.
Dreaming to be a film director, I wanted my work to assist people in their search. But when I recall how I felt then, I can’t understand if my wish was so pure. Did I want to help people by bringing new fiction or was I looking for ways of revenge?
It is a wish to have everything under control, to decide whether one is born or dies, to not have to surrender to the inevitable rules of passing away.
And then this is why from time to time, I feel like I have never made a conscious decision to go into fine arts. So maybe this is why I have such a problem to call myself an artist or "shape a career". Sometimes I try to quit and move back but I can't, realising that there is nowhere else to go. Therefore I just continue.