The clash and swash of costumed warriors on a stage is not real battle, and the slashing of pallet knife and thrusts of paintbrush are no less theatre in the hands of Jerzy (George) Lesniewicz.
His old-country Polish heritage is dabbed all over his artist's psychology, as he taps out impressionist jabs on the canvas.
"People think it has to be lifelike but the nice way of saying it is, it's all phoney," said Lesniewicz. "When people start out painting, they think they have to recreate on the canvas what they have before them in reality. But these things are just shapes. All you need to do is suggest the shapes to the viewer. What you are really after is the light value. The authenticity of a painting lies in your sense of the light value."
The longtime Prince George artist has turned his hand to everything from graphic design to political cartoons, but the detached studio at his College Heights home is the nest he prefers, at least when he is not out on the backroads and meadows of the area for inspiration.
"It is so important to be there, and you can't even use a photograph to get you your painting. Photographs don't give you the truth of what is really there. The shapes are in the photograph, but usually the light conditions you saw with your eye are not seen by the camera."
He knows that other tool almost as well. He is an avid and studied photographer, but for its own sake.
"People ask why I take photos but I don't paint from photos. They are different animals. I am a painter. If I could represent the world as well with a photograph, I'd be a photographer, and that is the discipline I'd pursue."
He and wife Angela travel extensively, both locally and internationally. In addition to the pleasures of experiencing other locales and cultures, Lesniewicz also uses the different scenes and light conditions to inspire more art. He does simple still-life of fruit, or scenes of wind-whipped grass, or the bodies of boats dumped on the shore, a tree or a face, it is not a particular subject that consistently draws him in, it is the place itself and how the scene unfolding in front of him registers.
"The mind fills in the rest. The mind - we don't give people enough credit. If you try to spoon-feed the mind, that's where you get schlocky art," he said.
He certainly appreciates the master works, judging by the other art on the walls of his home. He has a series of Salvador Dali lithographs. He has a framed poster from the 1800s advertising the Jacob Hoffmann Brewing Company. He has the oil-on-canvass depictions by his friend and fellow Prince George painter Gene Bricker. He has also kept a few of his own that have won awards or been appreciated particularly highly by his family and friends.
It demonstrates that he is not a snob about style, but he is insistent on quality. Further example is found in the drawers of his studio where he keeps tubes of paint like mechanics keep socket sets and wrenches. The paints are not fast-drying acrylics or synthetic oils. They are the original recipes that have been used for centuries by the great masters. One shade of yellow is derived from cow urine. A shade of red is made from a particular beetle, a black from burned bone, some from crushed stones.
"Just about everybody from the impressionists used oils and so do I," he said, his favourite being landscape and portrait specialist Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot (1796 to 1875). "With science, you can synthesize anything, but to me, that shows. The colours are too plastic-y. I like that old school. I am still in touch with the people that preceded me."
Out in the field he also uses no plastic pallet; his are grey paper-based pallets that allow the colours to pop as he looks quickly up and down between the scene, the canvass, and the piles of paint. When done, he can discard it, as he does the thin plastic gloves on his hands - both deliberate choices to avoid toxic cleaning supplies attached to the history of his paintings.
But because he does "honest painting" on the spot, what is attached is often the ambient environment blowing on the wind. "The one I just brought home from the Buckhorn has some needles and bugs stuck to it, and I'll leave that on because it's all part of it."
Explanations about these habits and practices will soon be street conversation in Victoria. Lesniewicz is the only northerner chosen for this year's epic annual art event held on the sidewalks of the provincial capital.
"The Art Gallery of Greater Victoria's annual Paint-In on Moss Street features invited professional and emerging artists from Victoria and region who 'bring their studios to the street' and demonstrate their art to over 35,000 visitors strolling Moss Street from Fort Street to Dallas Road," said Mary-Ellen Threadkell, the event's co-ordinator. It is a not-for-profit event sponsored by TD Bank.
"The Paint-In offers visitors an opportunity to meet and discuss the artists' work, materials, process and to see an enormous variety of professional work at one time," said Threadkell. "Artists are selected for the Paint-In through a competitive jury process. Each year we have been in the fortunate position of having more artists interested in participating than we have spaces available and the only way to ensure consideration is by submission."
Once the event is complete, Lesniewicz will stay on in Victoria and set up his easel at interesting spots he finds around lower Vancouver Island. Later this summer he is off to Florence, to paint and learn in the heart of the classical art world.
It's just the next step in his constant evolution, he said. He was already self-taught to a point when he enrolled at the Banff School of Fine Arts in 1968, and he has been working the creative crafts ever since.
"I'm going to die with a smile on my face and a brush in my hand," he said.
