Fort Saint-André Painting

Zenon Nowacki is a painter, graphic designer and medical illustrator. Born in Poland, he received his master's degree at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw in 1974. He has been living in Canada since 1982. Zenon has also been the creative force behind many successful advertising campaigns and is an author of over thousand medical illustrations. His other passion is the study of the Old Masters. Story: My love affair with Old Masters started shortly after graduating from the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, whose 6-year program educated avant-garde artists in the spirit of rebellion against the past and the adaptation of the philosophy of Francis Bacon and post-modernism; of which I was an ardent apprentice. One day a friend of mine showed me a picture of a very detailed, intricate flower arrangement by an unknown Russian painter of the 18th century and he bet that I would die rather than copy it. It took me a few years to finish this painting, which later hung among other aggressive, avant-garde paintings but was distinguished by its beauty, calm, mysterious atmosphere of a warm afternoon, and stopped time. It was a pleasure to look at it. It provided meditative therapy, introduced a good mood and at the same time undermined the sense of these wild chaotic gestures recorded on other canvases. It was a shock for me and I started to understand the aims of art in a completely different way. Up to XX century, it was a matter of pride to possess ones own version of a great artwork. King Charles I, had up to 60 copies of Old Master paintings, Rubens made copies of over fifty paintings by Titian and art dealers were in search of copies to fill European court collections. The attitude towards copies of Old Master paintings has changed today. We see copies as a lack of originality, and value them less on account of their lack of autographs. I have visited many museums in the world and I often couldn't resist starting to copy a painting that I would like to own. Many artists did the same: Watteau, Delacroix, Ingres, Fantin-Latour, Cézanne, Rodin and many others. Following master strokes lets you see all the nuances of the work unnoticeable in the gallery, allows you to enter inside the personality of the artist and penetrate the masters soul. Nothing improves the mood better than a small Renoir on a wall or a Byzantine icon shimmering with gold and purple.