Belgium based figurative painter Michal Lukasiewicz portrays his subjects with the tenderness and warm sensuality of the High Renaissance, combined with the vibrancy of Pop art in his use of bright colors. Working primarily in acrylic, his works are almost monochrome, if not for the patches of shades like off-white, ochre, sienna, pink, grays, and neon oranges and yellows. Despite the contemporary expressiveness of his palette, his nude subjects, mostly women, have a mysteriously quiet nature about them that recalls famous figures in art like Leonardo’s “Mona Lisa”, or Vermeer’s “Girl with a Pearl Earring”. Those figures are often characterized by the artist’s deliberate process of synthesizing eclectic models, linked to fashions in literary culture. With that notion, Lukasiewicz’s subjects can be seen as a reflection of new attitudes towards beauty. “My paintings are of the human form, the soft tenderness that it can transfer to the viewer; never the anger of the world but the peace and harmony that humans are capable of,” Lukasiewicz shares. “I have been influenced by living in Belgium and painters of the Benelux countries and I try to show the placid side of the subject using light, the reflection of light and the shadows to emphasize the subjects form and curves. I never use color but the subtleness of tone to achieve these effects. I try to achieve the smoothness of skin and the body so no brush strokes are visible to the viewer.”
The impossibilities that magic and fantasy can create are at the heart of