The Birth of Self-Confidence #09 Collage

Tomasz Brynowski is an artist and architect who lives and works in Katowice, Poland where he was born in 1985. He is a graduate of Architecture and Urban Design at the Silesian University of Technology. He also studied Architecture and Urban Design at the Technical University of Wroclaw, Poland. He is a licenced architect and a member of the Chamber of Polish Architects and the Association of Polish Architects. For years Brynowski has shared his work between architecture and visual arts having worked in Barcelona, London and now his hometown Katowice. Initially his painting style lied somewhere between pop art, poster and minimalism. The paintings depicted mostly portraits and feminine motifs represented by sharp close-ups and tight shots. The way of presenting a human body silhouette on canvas was often brought to the simplest ways of visual effect showing only what was necessary to read the form. In 2010’s Brynowski was involved in street art producing mostly spray painted stencils in the streets of his hometown. While living in London he gained exposure to Shoreditch street art, which influenced his painting style. His fascination by urban art and city itself keeps to define his work. He often travels to big cities to hunt new pieces of graffiti. His source of inspiration lies in dark corners Barcelona’s Raval, hidden walls of London’s Shoreditch or walls of warehouses in Brooklyn’s Bushwick. Brynowski also draws inspiration from the heritage of artists such as Robert Rauschenberg, Jackson Pollock or Andy Warhol, but also adds his own street art and architecture style layer. Most pieces by the author are inspired by specific places he had been to and impressions he had while being there. In his work he often tries to transfer the image of a doodled, street art wall into the canvas. His paintings are usually made by creating many layers of various media that overlap each other. To create his artworks he uses various tools and media like acrylic paint, spray paint, structural gel, markers, squeezers, stencils, prints and scraps of paper ripped out of posters, newspapers or magazines. In his collages he often uses photographs taken by himself and transforms them on computer into a digital graphics in order to print them on canvas and then cover them with many layers of various kind.