Stefan Szczesny, Mustique

These works combine painting and photography. The artist Stefan Szczesny has long been a resident of some of the world's most beautiful oceanfront settings, and his paintings depict the exotic and primitive allure of tropical culture. In 1985, he transformed a series of "travel" photos into multi-dimensional works by painting over them. The subsequent dialogue between these two media is both highly personal and very accessible. Szczesny's canvases incorporate bold imagery and brilliant colour with commentary on island life - the rhythms, the heat and the light. His use of texture and line both imitate and enlarge the underlying photo, but the resulting work is unique. These photo-paintings range from the mysterious, fragrant jungles of the island of Mustique to the beaches of the Cote D'Azur.