Tomasz Obajtek - Illithid

artist Tomasz Obajtek, "Illithid", 2024, oil on canvas, 140/100/2 cm., signed on the back, Poland, shipped in a tube, canvas rolled.

I completed the Art&Design program at the Faculty of Art of the University named after KEN in Kraków, obtaining the Master of Arts degree.
My creative work focuses on narrative painting, balancing between figuration and abstraction. I combine elements of fantasy, religious iconography and symbolism, treating them as material for building my own, often grotesque visual stories. I operate in a realm I define as seriously unserious painting — working with pathos, deformation and subtle humor.

In parallel I develop two strands: expressive grotesque religious-fantastical, based on dramatic, exaggerated depictions of characters and scenes, and narrative organic abstraction, in which meaning arises through the title, the rhythm of forms and color tensions. Both areas are united by deformation, metaphor and ironic distance, allowing me to break literalness and the excess of grandeur.

I am interested in the image as a contemporary form of myth — a space where the sacred meets the grotesque, and narration meets abstraction. I treat painting as a medium of storytelling, emotion and symbol, not as an illustration of reality.