I usually associate Nowacki with the body, identity and the psyche in flux, but this canvas sits in a category of its own. For me it is about accepting who and how you are, and about how little it really costs to put on different masks. We behave one way with the person we love, another with friends, a neighbour, a policeman. I keep wondering whether Nikita feels contentment here, or whether I am only reading it into him.
The painter
Maciej Nowacki is a young Polish painter of intimacy and closeness, returning again and again to the same people in a quiet, almost devotional light. Identity, the body and the masks we put on for different people run through his work, and in one form or another he is nearly always in the picture himself.