Tony Jankowski feels that besides studying and mastering techniques, one of the artist's first requirements is to see and discover beauty in ordinary things. He feels that art is a result of sensaton and emotions, as well as an understanding of the fundamentals of nature, the spirit of life, and the secret of growth and the constructive force. He respects the relative importance of order and balance. He says that complexity of feeling for value, harmony, symmetry and order is a sensation that, together with associated ideas and their attendant emotions, constitute the full perception of the subject.
Jankowski was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, of Lithuenian parents. His mother, a former teacher, exposed him to European Masters and encouraged him to draw and paint at an early age. At age five he painted his first watercolor and took up traditional oil painting at age thirteen. Tony's paintings have been shown in galleries throughout the United States, Central and South America. He has won many awards and and completed numerous commissions.
While working toward a degree in engineering at the University of Buenos Aires, Tony studied privately with several of Argentina's leading artists. He was not surprised to find that the engineering and art studies intertwined in many instances. "Da Vinci was an engineer" Jankowski likes to note. "By that I certainly do not mean to compare myself to Da Vinci, but to show 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, he 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. 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. After ten years of study with Buck, Tony had received, in Buck's words, "the equivalent to an education from the Chicago Art Institute."
Jankowski uses these techniques of dynamic symmetry and golden proportions in his paintings. He says, "Essentially, it is a combination of mathematical proportions and values that will result in a painting with a golden point that will please the eye."
