The Farewell Tree near Stanisławice has been present in my imagination since childhood.
It is connected with an old tradition from a village near Kozienice in Mazovia. In this place, an ancient pine once stood with a small shrine embedded in its structure. Funeral processions would stop there on the way to the parish cemetery, and prayers were said for the deceased. It was a moment of pause — a final gathering before the last parting.
According to local belief, this was also the place where the dead symbolically said goodbye to their village, their family, and the world they left behind. The tree became known as the “Choica” — the farewell pine — and functioned as a threshold between life and death, presence and absence.
Over time, the original tree decayed under the weight of years, offerings, and natural processes. In 1997, a commemorative structure was created using a naturally shaped trunk with deep scars and hollows. In its interior, a figure of the crucified Christ was placed, preserving the memory of the original ritual site. The object still carries traces of time — woodpecker marks, decay, and structural interventions made to keep it standing.
What interests me is not only the historical narrative, but the atmosphere that remains around it. The tree is no longer only a natural object or a monument. It feels like a point where different layers of meaning intersect — landscape, ritual, memory, and belief.
There is also a sense that older, pre-Christian relationships with trees and passage still echo beneath the later Christian form of the shrine. Rather than a clear break, the site feels like a layering of traditions, where different ways of understanding nature and death coexist in the same physical structure.
In my painting practice, I do not treat this place as pure documentation. It begins with observation, but becomes something translated through light, atmosphere, and memory rather than direct representation.
The Farewell Tree is not only a historical object. It is a landscape where time, belief, and memory remain visible at once.
