Tadeusz Biernot

Having graduated form the Cracow Academy of Fine Arts (Poland) with an MA in Graphic Arts, Tadeusz Biernot devoted the ensuing decade to teaching and academic pursuits.   Since 1989, he has lived and worked both in Italy and Canada.

 While the focus of his professional career has been until recently directed at graphic design, painting has always remained at the core of his intellectual and emotional expression – and now, has become a full-time activity.

The character of his work can be best described paraphrasing Cicero who states that man not so much creates as discovers and rediscovers. Biernot’s paintings reflect the topography of his memory, its consciousness and sub-consciousness.  It is the constant pursuit of the points of reference encoded in his memory that gives the spark and anticipation to his creative endeavors.    Like an archeologist who from bits and pieces brings back to life a visual notion of the past rather than its reconstruction, Biernot sifts through his own experiences and emotions, factual and well as imagined, and enlivens them as visual forms both abstract and non-abstract using a variety of media – pastels, acrylics, oils on canvas, paper and wood.

His most recent exhibit is titled somewhat obliquely OPLONTIS – this little known part of Naples was once home to Poppaea, Emperor Nero’s second wife.  The remnants of her villa, rarely visited by tourists, project a unique atmosphere – one has a feeling of intruding on the intimacy of the home whose owners are momentarily away.  The same benevolent feeing of intrusion is reflected in the exhibited works depicting the never-ending struggle of revealing and concealing thoughts, emotions, urgings via a human face. The messy and complicated images are Biernot’s way of explaining what nurtures his own imagination and permeates his oeuvre – obviousness and ambiguity, the essence of art.