JOANNA SALSKA
"In
the psyche of all of us, the artists and writers, there was a
strong drive to help the nation persevere. But now I have to
speak to the world, because I don't belong anywhere, in some
sense."
Politics
has failed, and it still will not go away. Even as we seek to enter
the eternal, we must manage everyday evil. We have our voice, and
we have our witness. We will not stop seeing, try as we might to
pretend we have stopped.
"You
are caught in history, you can't do anything but you have to speak
your mind, for your own psyche's sake." Joanna
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Joanna
Salska grew up in Warsaw, in the years after German occupation gave over
to Russian occupation. Sometimes she lived in the care of her grandmother,
who grew up when Poland failed to exist as a country. From the age of
five Joanna painted. Eventually she entered the Warsaw Academy. Mandatory
training included figure drawing, of course, as well as philosophy, art
history, architecture and interior design. She excelled in her use of
color but was a failure in Russian, despite growing up one block from
a Soviet military barracks.
Her early work appears notable for somewhat claustrophobic landscapes that
kept the viewer firmly rooted in one place. The portraits she did as a child
had long since given way to foreboding nature studies. Like most artists, she
was not, and is not, a political person in any conventional sense of the word.
The act of painting, like speech or any intensely conceived behavior, does
have an implicit moral dimension, however.
In 1982, not long after martial law had temporarily rendered the country mute
* no phone, empty skies, dread organizing the day * Salska came to the United
States to stay one year in an artist colony. She planned to return to Poland,
where the state indulged officially sanctioned artists with a number of benefits,
and she had established a lucrative side business as a fashion designer. Toward
the end of her year, however, she traveled to San Francisco, where she attended
a gallery opening and fell in love. Within a day or two she elected to change
her life.
Joanna Salska lives inBerkeley Ca, with her husband and daughter.
Quentin Hardy -"Forbes"