Untitled 1980

Zdzislaw Beksinski made this untitled painting sometime during his career. It looks like it’s oil on canvas, built up with layers of hazy browns and reds. The way the colours blend together makes it feel like looking at a memory, something distant and just out of reach. I love how Beksinski uses texture, especially on those rock formations in the foreground. You can almost feel the roughness, the way the paint catches the light. And then there’s that tower in the distance, it feels like it's been eroded by time, standing alone in a landscape that’s both beautiful and kind of terrifying. There is a strange 'o' shape just below the tower - maybe it's a sun, maybe it's a zero, it's hard to tell, but that's fine. Thinking about other artists, maybe someone like Caspar David Friedrich, who was also into landscapes that are full of feeling. But Beksinski takes it somewhere darker, more personal. It’s a reminder that art doesn’t always have to be pretty; it can be a way of exploring the weird, uncomfortable stuff too.