Andrzej Skorut was born in 1969 in Krakow, Poland. This thousand-year-old city in Eastern Europe, with its impressive architecture, fine museums, and abundant works of art, is where Andrzej spent his early years. Such intensely aesthetic surroundings undoubtedly had a profound influence on Andrzej, who began painting at a very early age and had already decided to pursue a career as an artist by the time he finished elementary school. Despite fierce competition for places, Andrzej was accepted into the Art High School (Liceum Sztuk Plastycznych) whose stringent artistic standards stimulated his interest in art still further.
In 1987, Andrzej immigrated to the United States, where he continued his art education receiving an ‘Honors at Entrance’ Scholarship. In 1995, he graduated from University of Utah as a PHI Kappa member, with a Bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts.
Shortly afterwards, Andrzej was selected for a three months internship. This internship – a period of three months’ intense painting was unquestionably a key factor in determining Andrzej’s future. Inspired and encouraged, he returned to Salt Lake, rented a studio, and began painting full-time.
Although my paintings initially appear to be simple landscapes, further study shows them to be as abstract as they are representational. It is this combination that inspires me. I believe in the importance of the immediate visual impact of a painting – a recognizable image, a combination of colors, or the overall composition. Yet I also believe that deeper, truer meanings should lie beneath the surface, giving the viewer an opportunity to embark upon a personal voyage of discovery. It is my aim to make this journey as stimulating as possible by my own techniques of employing complex processes to apply the paint. This leads to many different levels of interpretation, allowing a simple landscape to take on a new identity within a complex framework of abstractions.
Landscapes dominate the subject matter of my work simply because they have always surrounded my life. Using the landscape as a filter, I bring to my paintings anything and everything that excites me, whether this is a new combination of colors, the composition of different elements, or the interrelationship between many different aspects of the painting. Drawing from my life experiences in Poland, Utah, and other places I have traveled to, my paintings are a union of diverse landscapes and the changing emotions that they evoke.
The essence of my painting lies in the method of creation, a method that is both direct and indirect, and that entails applying paint, then glaze, then repeating the process until I achieve the desired effect. I like to scratch into the layers of paint with sticks, rags, or other implements to reveal concealed depths. I am always looking for new ways of applying paint – for me, brushes and palette knives alone are too limiting and speak too clearly of the process involved. I like to include materials that leave interesting marks on the surface of the painting, marks that are as interesting in themselves as what they represent.
