The first word that comes to mind on entering the gallery is BRILLIANT! It's a natural response to the colour, concept and imagery of Szydlowski's artwork. The next response is a smile, one born from the sense of joy and wonderment that overtakes us. It's no surprise this artist has been awarded honours, prizes and kudos from around the world. His art is original, excellently produced and presented, and communicates to the heart, mind, imagination, and aesthetic of everyone.

After the eye gets used to the dazzling hues we find it hard to disengage from the fascinating imagery. Suggestions of fish, fowl, flowers and faces collide with painted patterns or dance on gold and silver leaf to the music of the spheres. Even the catalogue list offers another dose of delight with titles such as Chicken Halloween or Happy Man With The Colourful Sock or Magical Creatures On the Moonlit Meadow. There's only one thing left to do, jump into the magic and enjoy the experience.

Szydlowski's work may at first appear as compilations of Klee, Picasso and the geometric abstraction of Kandinsky but to see only these influences is to deny this artist due respect. Each image is truly unique as the artist employs motifs that come from his own store of symbols. Stylized palm trees, bird-beaks, eyes, split circles and triangles are arranged in a myriad of patterns to be interpreted differently in each composition by every viewer.

In both the large and small format, Szydlowski creates exuberant images of visual interplay between figure and ground. He respects the surface of his paintings by employing vibrant colours and patterns of interest. Black line is used to draw sufficient information suggestive of one object then moves on to hint at another, before the first is secured in the mind. And figures are based on puppets, those inanimate forms that are enlivened only by an individual infusing them with their own identity. With all this Szydlowski is able to hold the door to the imagination wide open so we easily go from the real to the surreal and back.

Here one painting provides a multitude of  images for the viewer. Each composition can be read differently every time we view it as we re-interpret the parts to read as a new whole. For example on my initial approach to Lunatics From The World Of My Imagination I found a Harlequin, a man chewing on a piece of straw, and other wonders while on the second viewing of the same painting there was a chicken, fish swimming in a field of blue-green grass, and the roof of my neighbour's house.

Get to this exhibition and let your imagination go on a carefree ride through Szydlowski's serendipity all the while knowing it is artistically secure.