Statement, September, 2025

I'm a landscape painter and I wander around painting small pictures, plein air, in oils.

I travel as much as I can. I like to go to Italy, to North Africa, bits of India and odd, hidden places in Scotland. I like architecture particularly from the 18th and 19th century and I like trees a lot.

I`m interested in small pictures, in which I see parallels to the short story form: inviting concision intimacy and simplicity, and being related to journeys to places, like “postcards”.

And, of course I love colour, the mass or liquidity of paint and the simple act of making.

But I think, increasingly, that my pictures are only very partially about what I see, and more and more driven by unconscious mental forces, the "strange and peculiar life of the mind", in Knut Hamsun`s words.

Tadeusz Deręgowski: Statement, 1 May, 2024

I'm a British. I studied in Scotland. I live in Aberdeen.

I work in three media: as painter, author and printmaker.

With the first, I travel around and paint small pictures, plein air, in oils. I`m trying to make pictures that give the satisfaction you feel when a jigsaw puzzle piece snaps into place or which have the rightness of peanut butter on buttered toast. And at the same time I want to make things that show the look of a place.

As an author I like to describe characters and absurd, but recognisable situations in short, often humorous pieces, usually set in urban contexts.

And as a printmaker, I work in Monotype, a technique necessitating considerable spontaneity. I treat similarly absurdist themes to those in my writing.

Statement, September 2018

I'm a British painter. I travel around and paint small pictures, plein air, in oils. I studied in Scotland but have been living in Brazil for the last twelve years.

I`m trying to make pictures that that give the satisfaction you feel when a jigsaw puzzle piece snaps into place or which have the rightness of peanut butter on buttered toast, or a few notes on the piano that sit together so well as in a piece by Debussy ...

At the same time I want to make things that show the look of a place.

And at the same time as that I want my pictures to be about how I feel at that exact point in time when I`m making the work.

Artist Statement, June 2018

I work in oils, usually on a small scale. The paintings are on thick card using a variety of textures, painted plein air.

I record my responses to places, buildings, things and people. I like like to play with questions arising from the meeting of Eastern Art philosophies with Western ones: questions about spontaneity and the use of absence in the picture field. I love to experiment with different mark making techniques and to play with ideas about colour and harmony.

I most like subjects which are in some way hidden or mysterious: one of the central functions of art for me is the revealing of secrets. I love using art as a form of, and motivation for, exploration. I enjoy using portraiture as a way of studying people in their environments, attempting to show their inner lives.

I see my work in the line of both travel painters such as Edward Lear or Turner, and expressionist painters such as Bonnard or Joan Eardley: I have a portable kit with which I can easily transport materials and wet paintings.

I plan further painting trips in Latin America, to the UK and the USA.

Tadeusz Deręgowski

June, 2018