Zdzisław Beksiński was a Polish painter, sculptor and photographer, who specialised in dystopian surrealism. I was struck by the gothic and post apocalyptic style, as well as the warm and almost dusty colour palette that Beksiński used. Whilst having a focus on surrealism, Beksiński also used abstraction in his work, particularly with faces and facial features. He mainly used oil paint on hardboard panels, but also used acrylics, achieving a more classical effect. To me, the paintings appear to have grim meanings and a dream-like feeling. This is similar to the feeling I got from LeRoy Clarke's work- his abstracted and surreal paintings and drawings evoked a feeling of dreams and nightmares. Beksiński seemed to be enthralled with the idea of human mortality, emphasising this with the use of flesh decay and skeletons in his paintings.
From this, however, I receive the feeling of spirituality in the way that the painting appears to perceive dreams of life and death, as well as the depths of the human subconscious. This links very well to my work, as my focus on folklore in the Caribbean fits well with the exploration of human perception and interpretation of mythical beings from words only. I decided early on in my project that I would work mainly from description of Caribbean folklore beasts by text, which is similar to Beksiński's work, as he was mainly inspired by classical music- something non-visual that prompted his imagination and interpretations.
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