Welcome to tamor.co.uk. Here you can see paintings by me, Tamor Kriwaczek, and other various artworks. To find out about me, or what I do, please read the aricles below, and, of course, check out my paintings.

Thanks.

Tamor Kriwaczek.

There is a long history of Jigsaw puzzle making going back to the 18th century. The origianl jigsaws where perhaps not what you think, but maps mounted on thin sheets of wood, and then cut up into pieces, not interlocking as your imagined childhood jigsaw was, but along the lines of borders or political alegiances so they nestled together conspiratorialy. See below for a brief history of the jigsaw puzzle.
Now of course, there are miriad puzzles out there, cheap stamped out cardboard puzzles of Winnie the Pooh or the latest blockbuster kids movie, or, indeed, tedious chocolate box photographs of mind numbing nostalgia. There are also those that reproduce works of art, famous paintings of one kind or another, the Hay Wain or Mona Lisa, and then there are the enthusiasts, the makers who cut their puzzles from wood, and who seem to fall into two groups: those that use prints of paintings or other works of art or photographs, cutting thier jigsaws in their own particular style; and those that produce puzzles of geometric patterns, designed to make the player pull their hair out with frustration.
Wooden jigsaw puzzles offer a quality and feel that cannot be gained from a cardboard puzzle no matter who the manufacturer. Hand cut puzzles are also unqique (not all wooden puzzles are hand cut, computers can do it all for you now with a laser if you wish), every piece as individual as the last, their interest and complexity defined by the 'puzzle master' as they weave their way through the wood, walking invisible lines of interlocking journeys that lead to the finished piece.
Do you remember that jigsaw you did as a kid? It was of a train, or was it a harbour picure with fishing boats, or a castle or mountain view, or... there was always that one piece, it had that bit of red on it, and it connected to that interestingly shaped piece that was unlike any other. That one piece you remember, because unlike any other image of any kind anywhere, you will never study a picture so much as when you make a jigsaw puzzle. Every piece counts, you look at it, find out where it goes, where its place is in the whole. You obsever textures and details that while strolling through an art gallery you completely miss, but here, in a world where art and game fuse together in an analogue object, you see for yourself what goes into making a work of art work, in detail, one piece at a time. That's why I make jigsaws puzzles.
All my puzzles I make by hand, of my own original paintings or digital images of composite photography. So what you get from me is always a totally original image. In creating a puzzle I try to incorporate the two ways jigsaw puzzles can be completed: by matching up fragments of the image, or matching up the shapes of the pieces, playing on the pleasure gained from placing a beautiful piece into its mate. I may add figurals, or whimsies, intricateluy cut silhouettes with their own place in the image, or curlicues, or straight edges in the middle of the puzzle, just to confuse you. But above all, I like my puzzles to be fun, challenging at times, and a great image.
There is no definitive answer to the question of who invented the jigsaw puzzle, but the concensus at present is that John Splisbury produced the first commercially availbale jigsaw puzzle in the world. It was about 1760. The apprentice to the Royal Geographer and engraver of maps came upon the idea of fixing his maps to a thin sheet of mahogany, and cutting around the countries' boarders to sell as an aid to education. The idea of these 'dissected maps' caught on, and for the next 60 years 'dissections' of this sort, made by many different people, were used to teach the children of the upper classes the geography of the known world.
By the 1840's dissected maps had developed with a number of interlocking puzzles availbale, much more like the puzzles we know today, but still, the main subject matter were maps, and all these puzzles were cut by hand with a fine saw until around 1880 with the introduction of the treddle saw. With the more frequent use of this mechanical saw to make the puzzles, (realated to but not in fact a jgsaw) what were formerly known as 'dissections' were now called 'jigsaw' puzzles. At this piont they were still being cut out of thin sheets of wood, until the late 19th century when plywood came to be used. At this time cardboard was also being tried for the first time, mainly for childrens puzzles, and then when in the early 20th century the technology had been developed to cut out the jigsaw by machine with a die, mass manufacture became possible, and the ubiquitous cardboard puzzle that we know so well today came into being.

[Extract from An Artist's Cookbook...]

Opening the paper he looked for the art promised on the front page. Not for the first time he wondered what his position was in that world, observing the increasing fashion for stuff as art, things, objects inadvertently placed together, pierced through each other, or made from unlikely materials; a distraction from itself through the perplexing new that everyone craved. It's an "oh!" moment, a split second of entertainment. The "art" that is superimposed on the object becoming a vanishing point in time, gone as quickly as it appears signifying nothing more than the expectation of it, a jaded reminder that we needed shaking out of our apathy into thinking in a new way once upon a time. But this had itself become a cliché.
So now what? The cream of art becomes a low fat spread, plastered onto every conceivable surface, created out of diamonds and garbage alike, it was almost a pollutant. He looked up from the paper with a half smile as he took another drink and remembered Baggi's fire extinguisher. It was a seminal moment in his youth. He had gone to an exhibition with a few friends, lots of object type art, no internal context, all reliant on the fact that they were in a gallery space, their only point to discuss the nature of art, what art was or was not, none of it communicating directly to the observer, telling them something about life. It was art in the mirror, loving itself, taking over the artist as a Narcissistic agent of self justification, giving the artists an excuse to study the subject without having to say anything at all. And while he and the rest of his friends looked around the show, Baggi spent the time looking at one object alone: the fire extinguisher.
He studied it diligently, from each side, from the front and below, craning his head over the top of it to wring out every last drop of artistic merit. Then he looked for the label to see if its title could give him some further clue as to its deeper meaning. There was no label. It was a fire extinguisher. It was for putting out fires. That's what it did. And as such it was prepared for action, would do its job well, and thus live a fulfilled and happy life. But in that room it lacked something, something that all the other objects had to justify their participation in the event: an artist.
He knew, from that moment, that there was something 'other' in art, something he didn't understand or in any way feel part of. And now that otherness had caused art to become an industry like any other, an industry of useless aesthetics that did little more than provide the enterprisingly verbose an opportunity to flap their mouths for money once they had gained the requisite experience: go to college, get your degree, make contacts, then exhibitions, commissions, competitive tendering for public art, prizes, and finally, you are an artist, whatever you say goes: you sign you name, it becomes art, you tell people something is art, it is art, you call yourself an artist, you are an artist, proven by the fact that you have caused an object to be called art through your own self defining authority.
It meant nothing any more.
He dropped the paper on the floor and took another swig from the bottle. He couldn't decide if there was too much art or not enough. Either there were too many artists procucing too much art, great claims being made by the arterarty for the deluge of 'fantastic creativity' that polluted every crevice of society, or there wasn't enough, most of the 'art' not actually being art at all but a kind of pseudo art, self justified and unimaginative, shouting for all they're worth: "Me too! Me too!" Either way he was drowning. But the truth was, he was part of the problem, producing yet more effluent to clog up the world with. The rampant decadence of the 20th century had finally reached its goal of sullying the most noble of all forms of creation, debasing it through its interest in itself alone. And there he was, in the middle of it all, the bottle of whiskey half empty in his hand as he drowned in the liquified carcass of what he once believed in and now despised, despite having the persistant urge to create more and more of it, an addict tormented by a drug that can only be escaped by death.
PF

Tamor asked me to write the introductions to his website since a) he had no idea what to say about himself, and b) he didn't like talking about himself anyway. So, leaving it to someone who has known him for nearly twenty years, he gave me carte blanche to say what I like. So here it is...
Although I have known Tamor Kriwaczek for many years, I couldn't say I see him often. He always has his head buried in one work or another, whatever is his latest creation which he works at obsessively until it is brought fully formed into the world. He is a man that works hard at what he does, but doesn't always do what needs to be done. His main focus, continuously I might add, is the production of things, objects, ideas, whatever he decides to turn his mind to, whether it be a new painting, a computer programme, or a jigsaw puzzle.
In the beginning, it was always painting, and nothing else but painting, one after the other, a coninuous flow of oil on canvas, with the occasional forray into the other typical fine art forms of printmaking, drawing and sculpture. But there were always those times when his concentration would veer to the side and he would produce alternative objects. This used to mean the production of hand made books, catalogues of his latest paintings, then a book of verse appeared, and some music recorded on an old four-track (before pc's could do it all for you!). Then he got into computer programming, between paintings, which lead to One Million Minds [ed: see below], an extravaganza of flash coding that failed to live up to his dreams, as he often tells me, and as I often tell him back, he didn't go out and sell it. He has no answer to this, lowers his head and mumbles something about not wasting his time with things he isn't good at, he has only one life etc. etc.
Well whatever he doesn't manage to do, he continues to create, more painting, writing, objects of varying description, hand made jigsaws, computer imagery of the photoshop variety, original photographs transmuted into a disorganisation of pixels. He claims this last medium is interesting because anyone can take decent photographs now given the quality of readily available equipment; that there is no longer an art in taking a photo, as there used to be. But now the artistry in photography is what you do with the photos you take. Well, I maintain that the art to any art is getting people to see it, and beleive in it, and that that has always been the case, but he hangs his head again as I write this and mumbles something about what is, is not what should be, or some such nonsense.
I will leave you with this thought. He is someone who, try as he might, cares nothing for money, or other peoples idea of what he should be, or is. He simply, persistently, stubbornly, ploughs his own furrow. As he has said to me many a time: "if tomorrow I were lying on my deathbed, I will at least be satisfied that I spent my time on what I thought was important, I won't be saying to myself: what if..." PF

What can I say about Tamor's paintings? Well, he always produces colourful, high contrast images which bring so much more to their subjects than simple reproduction.
In years past he painted figures, people, friends mostly, and some made up characters, but the last few years have seen him develop his interest in landscape painting that rarely stop at the idea of presenting the observer with a simple representation of the view he is aiming to reproduce, instead illiciting the transformation that landscapes, or anything else for that matter, undergo when filtered through the mind of the artist.
They are very much his views, his ideas of what he is seeing, his reaction to the evironments he finds himself in, cast in deliberate brush strokes, deliberately expressive, abstracted shapes that conjour a more visceral vista of places without people, of skies with clouds that fight and writhe, seas that gather and merge with the land, lines of colour that splinter or mesh together, interlocking their varying intents to form worlds of imaginative reality that you are invited into.
When seen over time, they develop greater depth, and reward you with an experience that can only be gained from art that has that quality of honesty and integrity born of an innate understanding of the medium coupled with a willingness, or even a necessity to communicate directly to you through that medium. But that is the trick with painting, creating that depth, a philosophical depth, that rewards you over time with ever more layers to peel off and discover what lies beneath.
Tamor is a painter to his bones. I don't know when he started, but certainly he has been a painter ever since I have known him. He has described to me how painting is a language he understands at a fundamental level, that he can see a painting and grasp the attitude and emotion of the painter through their hand, quite seperately from the image of the painting that most would concern themselves with, to the point where he casts aside well known famous artworks that he claims are painted with such an unabashed lack of concern for the material being used, they become little more than illustrations, hyped up by the arty to become something they are truly not. I can't say I always agree with him on this point, but there is some truth to what he says. So I would ask you, next time you go to a gallery, or look at a real painting in someones home, or wherever else you may find one, take a good look at how it is made, how the hand is used, and make up your own mind. PF
[Ed: click here to see the paintings]

One Million Minds was Tamor bringing together art and computer programming. His interest in the latter he told me stemmed from when he played around with the early home computers, the zx-81, and BBC Micro. But then when PCs became ubiquitous, it was soon apparent that most people had no idea how to use them, that is, they could use a particular piece of softwware, once trained, but actually using the computer hardware, developing their own software was beyond anything most people could ever imagine doing. What he really liked was the fact that when you programme a computer, you take control, the computer becomes your tool, doing what you tell it, rather than most peoples experience which is doing what the computer allows you to do, doing what other people who have written the software you are using allow you to do.
This was one of the threads that brouhgt him to the point where One Million Minds was invevitable. So he deveopled a programme that would interpret answers to questions, in a way determined by him. It was a way, he said, of refining his own thought processes regarding the creation of a work of art, that he could then utilise automatically in a system that was prepared for any eventuality, or combinations of answers, which would lead to a unique image of somone elses mind, as interpreted by his own, through the medium of the programme he wrote.
In order to get the answers though, he had to develop a website to gather them. OneMillionMinds.co.uk was the result, with a flash movie that runs, briefly telling the story in more or less abstract terms of the idea for, and production of One Million Minds. His goal, of course, was to create 1,000,000 mindscapes from people throughout the world. He is not anywhere near this number, but declines to divulge how many exactly he has, so whether or not he will get there in the end I really couldn't say.
For my part, I think it's an interesting idea, and the images themselves are nice enough, depending of course on what kind of a mind you have(!), but the abstraction can only really be interpretted through comparison with other mindscapes. In short, the more interesting the image, the more interesting the person, at least that what he tells me.
You can still have your mindscape made and be part of this ongoing project at onemillionminds.co.uk. PF