Last Demo Meeting till fall to feature Jankowski, board installation

Tony Jankowski will demonstrate his prize wining oil painting techniques at the meeting, to be held from 2 to 4 p.m. at the Depot Gallery, located at the corner of 10th and Santa Barbara streets. The public is welcome to attend the meeting, where they will have a chance to win the demonstration piece. Light refreshments will also be served.

Jankowski was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina of Lithuanian parents. His mother, a former teacher, exposed him to European Masters and encouraged him to draw and paint at an early age. At 5 he painted his first watercolor, and he took up traditional oil painting at age 13.

While working toward a degree in engineering at the University of Buenos Aires, Jankowski studied privately with several of Argentina’s leading artists and was not surprised to find that the engineering and art studies intertwined in many instances.

“Da Vinci was an engineer,” Jankowski likes to note, and although not comparing himself to Da Vinci, he said it shows the basic relationship between art that is exciting to the eye and engineering that is the backbone of nearly everything the artist paints. That is a relationship in which Jankowski believes deeply, and which forms the foundation for his use of color, lines and form.

Continuing his art studies, Tony spent several years living and traveling throughout South America and Europe. He came to the United States in 1963, where he met Santa Barbara artist Claude Buck, a graduate of the Chicago Art Institute. Buck utilized the techniques of the Old Masters throughout his life, and it was he who interested Jankowski in the depiction of nature as a vital, moving force.