WŁADYSŁAW MIRECKI
Water Colours from 2010 & Selected Works
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9th November to 3rd December, 2010*
Duncan Campbell Fine Art, 15 Thackery Street, Kensington Square, London, W8 5ET. Tel: 020 7937 8665
Nearest tube High Street Kensington  |
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*The exhibition is extended further for December – please ring Duncan Campbell for dates and times.
Where enquiries of prices are
made on the gallery, the work is subject to availability
and the price to change.

('Fallen branches' is sold and not in the Duncan Campbell Fine Art Exhibition)
2nd prize winner in The Sunday Times Watercolour Competition 2010
(in association with Smith & Williamson)
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Station Road, Wakes Colne, 2010
37x88 cm |
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Władysław Mirecki
Władysław Mirecki paints the Essex landscape of the Colne Valley where he lives, not far from the Stour beloved of Constable and more recently, john Nash. He works exclusively in watercolour, with great conviction. Contrary to the popular belief that watercolour has to be right first time, Mirecki is constantly changing and re-working his images. He lifts off colour with clean water or removes paint with sandpaper or scalpel. His paintings evolve over time.
In the late 1990s, Mirecki began to find his own voice as an artist. He took pains to play down the evidence of the medium or the brush, and his ideal surface became one in which the paint dried on the paper without benefit of expressiveness, either in terms of brush-marks or too-evident veils of wash. The various layers — the base colour, perhaps pink or ochre or black, with which Mirecki subdues the terrifying blank sheet, then the water—soluble pencil drawing to rough out the composition, then the successive applications of paint — should all bond with the paper into a single harmonious surface.
Parallel with this technical development has been a change of working habit: Mirecki no longer works en plein air, but researches a subject thoroughly before re-creating it in the studio. He might use photos or he might gather an armful of wild flowers to ensure verisimilitude, but his process now is not simply recording the face of nature. Time-conscious outdoors notation has been replaced by an altogether lengthier contemplation as he makes a deeply considered and formally ordered equivalent of what he sees.
Constable was famously indicted for painting nature green when it was commonly thought that landscape should be as golden—brown as a Claudian idyll. Mirecki sometimes sees himself fighting the same battle in his own emphasis on green. He is impatient with wiseacres who remark how difficult a colour green is. “No more difficult than red", he responds. ‘And white is the most dangerous colour, because of its high energy." But revealingly he does identify an animosity to green in the national temperament, a manifestation of the Puritanism that keeps surfacing in public and private life. He sees the Puritan urge to grey and brown as a denial ofthe energy of one particular strand of our culture: the green force that drives the Green Man, and is symbolised in the Lincoln Green of that arch-revolutionary Robin Hood. Certainly Modernism disliked the lushness of green foliage (Mondrian pulled the blinds down when travelling through the verdant English countryside), but now it’s time to run the gamut of our viridescence again. Władysław Mirecki laments the infantilism of contemporary culture, and against the progressive cry of ‘simplify’, he counter-poses “unify’. His work is the opposite of approximate, vague, expressionist: it is precise, clear, unemotional. He deals in subtle and complex harmonies which reveal aspects of our surroundings we are apt to take for granted. Above all, his work celebrates the beauty of ordinary reality.
Andrew Lambirth, art critic of The Spectator.
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WŁADYSŁAW MIRECKI
1956 Born Chelmsford, Essex of Polish parentage.
He is self-taught, having painted all his life including his periods gaining his
science degree, as an industrial designer and co-proprietor of Chappel
Galleries (1986 - March 2010). |
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EXHIBITED |
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New English Art Club, Mall Galleries, London
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Epping Forest District Museum “Artists in Essex”
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Beecroft Art Gallery, Westcliffe on Sea, Essex 31st Open Exhibition
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Chappel Galleries, Essex Solo Exhibition
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Foyles Art Gallery, London
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Department of Transport art Competition, Mall Galleries, London
Deuxieme Salon Biennale de L’Aquarelle, Hirson, France (Chelmsford 1993)
Essex County Council, Deputy Lord Lieutenant of Essex Commission
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Chappel Galleries, Essex10th Anniverary Exhibition: Solo Exhibition
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Singer and Friedlander, Sunday Times Exhibition, London
1997 Beecroft Art Gallery, Essex: Open Exhibition
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1999 |
Jiangsu Provincial Art Gallery, Nanjing, China: Solo Exhibition
1999 Chappel Galleries, Essex Solo Exhibition |
2002 |
Chappel Galleries, Essex Blyth Spirit “Walberswick Artists: 1880–2000” |
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Chappel Galleries, Essex Solo Exhibition
2003 WH Pattersons, London Christmas Mixed Exhibition
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Royal Academy, London Summer Exhibition
2004 WH Pattersons, London Christmas Mixed Exhibition
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Chappel Galleries, Essex Solo Exhibition
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Royal Watercolour Society Open Competition, Bankside Gallery, London.
Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolours, Mall Galleries, London.
Royal Society of British Artists Annual Exhibition Mall Galleries, London: Winner of the Edward Wesson Award.
Beecroft Art Gallery, Westcliffe on Sea, Essex 49th Essex Open Exhibition: Awarded Prize and Shirley Robson Bowl for the best watercolour.
Chappel Galleries, Essex ‘Southwold, the East Coast’.
Sunday Times/Kaupthing Singer & Friedlander, London: 3rd Prize Winner, The Mall Galleries, London.
Lynn Painter-Stainers, London.
Chichester Open Art Exhibition, Chichester.
Royal West of England Academy 155th Autumn Exhibition, Bristol.
New English Art Club, The Mall Galleries, London.
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RWS/Sunday Times watercolour competition, Bankside Gallery, London
Lynn Painters-Stainers, London (third prize winner) |
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Chappel Galleries, Essex Solo Exhibition |
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Eastern Open, King’s Lynn Arts Centre
Duncan Campbell Fine Art, London: Solo Exhibition
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COLLECTIONS |
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Jiangsu Province Art Museum, People’s Republic of China
Jiangsu Province Department of Culture, People’s Republic of China
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Chelmsford Museums, Essex
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Ipswich Borough Council Museums & Galleries, Suffolk
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PUBLICATIONS |
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February Edition, Jiangsu Art Monthly
April Edition, Artists & Illustrators Magazine
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2003 |
A Walk in the Country – 32pp Monograph |
2006 |
“Southwold: An Earthly Paradise” by Geoffrey Munn.
Władysław Mirecki at Fifty – 32pp Monograph.
BBC Television Programme: ‘Seven Man-made Wonders of the East’ interview about Chappel Viaduct, showing Mirecki’s paintings depicting the Viaduct. |
2009 |
Jackdaw Magazine “Easel Words” May/June issue
2009 The Artist Magazine, “Masterclass” November issue
Pratique des Arts magazine France, December issue |
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