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With respect to Tarasewicz’s pieces, it is difficult to use the term ‘paintings’ in the traditional sense because the artist is not concerned with producing pictures but with the art of painting in its broadest sense. What he extends to the viewer on a finite stretcher or in free space – Tarasewicz’s works include both canvases and boards as well as whole interiors engulfed in flickering hues – is only a fragment of the unfinished but holistic framework that is painting. With an understanding of painting that is appropriate to the artist’s approach, the rule of pars pro toto – meaning ‘a part for the whole’ – offers a sole insight into his mystery.

This diptych by Tarasewicz does not have a title. It is what it is, and all formulae attempting to verbalise its nature prove to be insufficient. The artist avoids words and literary remarks. In its relation to the viewer, painting must speak for itself. It must speak to the senses and not to the intellect, despite the latter’s near inseparability from contact with an artwork – a fact stemming our modern tradition of describing and understanding art. Tarasewicz’s pieces owe their effect to painterly technique, with vigour or modesty, colour tone, textural makeup and creative impetus. The artist still displays an affinity for the classic triad of truth, goodness and beauty, which endow his works with authenticity; a truth, goodness and beauty that Tarasewicz humbly and respectfully keeps discovering in painting.

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