A Moment in the Wine Painting

Award-winning artist Sámuel Brassai. Tamás Stonawski lives in Mátészalka, near Debrecen. University lecturer, teacher. He teaches mathematics, physics and art. Its main source is nature, which will discover again and again. His basic research is applied in physics and in painting. He tries to paint the atmosphere games. He is inspired by the Hungarian and Transylvanian landscapes. He organizes summer courses in physics and painting for children and artists. It is a member of the traditional Baia Mare landscape painting colony. Tamás reshapes and rearranges in time and space. This pulsation can get synchronised with the basic rhythm of nature which we humans prefer most, since it deeply touches us through the category of „pleasing” and can at the same time lead us to „catharsis”. The movement in the picture surface, the vibration and blending of colours is some inner tension, a unique characteristic of this visualisation method. Already the gesture in the ripples involves the whole personality of the painter. It is not technical aids Tamás is brilliant with, but he strives to convey the energy of the call ever so directly. In this aspiration the intended form appears on the canvas through the movement of the hand extended with the paintbrush. With his own light-mysticism, landscape approach and atmospheric painting, as well as with his close to plein air pictures, Tamás depicts, practically with a realist’s need, what is seen and not what is known, while following the effect of the light conditions present in nature. His aim is to fix these passing effects and to grab the impression. As French painters claimed, “there are no lines in nature, only areas of colour”, and we perceive forms merely through colours. Tamás has also studied the optical aspects of light, air, colour intensity, as well as of reflected colours, which is also characteristic of his paintings. He organises his pictures just like impressionists did: he recognises that each colour enriches its surroundings together with its complement colour; therefore shadow also appears as a colourful surface. Most of his paintings “cohere” due to optical blending; his pictures are not confusing colour-sets but coherently and elegantly ensuing series of light and easy touches and vibrating tonalities. He goes beyond contour and line drawing; it is the light itself that is to be depicted.