Lynn artist manages to capture the essence of her subjects

LYNN – Irena Kaczor-Jankowska played hooky as girl but the times she snuck away from school were spent painting pictures not playing with friends.The Polish native’s dedication to art molded her into a prolific portrait artist whose oil painting of the late Vincent Lique hangs in the Greater Lynn Senior Services building dedicated in his memory.Kathy Lique praised the painting of her late husband at a March 20 ceremony celebrating his memory but she also treasures a sparely painted pastel showing Lique in a thoughtful pose.”Irena painted it from a photograph taken in our kitchen where we always hung out. It brings him to life,” she said.In painting Vince Lique, Jankowska relied on photographs and his widow’s memoriesto capture the well-known elder care advocate’s personality.To paint “Broken Heart,” a portrait of a woman mourning lost love, she drew on her own losses to capture her subject’s expression of bereft numbness.”I combined my feelings with hers. I feel like I’m part of the person,” she said.The heavy shadows in her portrait of a pilot who flew secret missions during World War II frame the flyer’s keenly focused eyes.She first picked up a brush at the age of 14, painting her uncle before moving onto other subjects. She received training in a Polish high school dedicated to artists before studying at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts.As her talent blossomed, she chose Rembrandt as her inspiration.”He found what was most important and deeply spiritual in ordinary people. I try to repeat his honesty in my art.”That creative endeavor prompted people, some more novel than others, to seek her out. She painted others only after pursuing them and convincing them to sit for her.A painting dubbed “Don Quixote” portrays a destitute Pole who never gave up his fight against Communism. She said the title refers to the hopeless struggle of one man trying to topple tyranny.In creating some portraits she was forced to work in a feverish, half-hour burst of painting to capture a person’s essence before their mood changed. With others, like a series she calls “The Narcissist,” she painted the same man over a span of six years with the paintings corresponding to different phases of the lunar cycle.”He said, ‘Paint me, show everything in my soul.'”Lique and fellow Unitarian Universalist Church members helped Jankowska secure grant money to support her work. GLSS is helping her find an apartment with sufficient workspace.Jankowska is preparing a book of her portraits that will include her written thoughts on each painting. The 25 works included in the book will be culled from over 2,000 portraits spanning her career.