" I look for inspiration in the humanistic tradition of classical art. My canvases express the entire spectrum of human emotions from exhilaration and cheerfulness to contentment, melancholy, pain, and agony," explains Rut , who now resides in Hollywood, Florida.
Encouraged by his mother, a painter herself, as a child Rut was introduced to the Pompeiien Frescos and the magnificence of the Renaissance and the Baroque, which today inspire his stunning oil on canvases and sweeping murals. These masterful illusionary works, both in scale and splendor, evoke the harmony and form of the master painters, including the flamboyance of Rubens, the finesse of Caravaggio, and the emotion of Michelangelo. Rut’s imaginary figures - centaurs, fauns, muses, and winged creatures - colorfully burst from the canvas with the grandiosity of Olympian Gods in active and dramatic poses.
" Rut’s mural size paintings are contemporary conversions of the classical vocabulary variously continued by Michelangelo, Raphael, Titian, and Rubens," explains Dorothy Keane-White, Art Curator & Director for Northwood University. "In making them he returns us to antiquity by a double detour. First, he sets in motion the charming unreal apparatus of the Quattrocento mise-en-scene, and more importantly its heroic nudity, vigorous modeling, expressive anatomic structure, powerful movement and fascinating physiogamy. Tinged with sadness, his super-human youths play once more on Arcadian pipes - a motif also reprised by Matisse.
Alternatively, he offers us impossible delicate, gracile females - ‘still unravished bride(s) of quietness’ - delimiting them with sylvan togas and braided tresses. Nor does he leave rearing steeds, which in the grand manner represent humanity’s turbulent passions."
Trained in Art Conservation at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, Rut continued his education in New York City at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn and at Columbia University in Manhattan. He eventually took a job in art conservation for the Biltmore House in Asheville, North Carolina, traveling the east coast restoring large scale murals in museums and mansions for such clients as the Smithsonian Institute and the U.S. Treasury Department in Washington, DC, the New Jersey State House in Trenton, and the Gusman Center for the Arts and Vizcaya Museum in Miami.
It was during these travels he began to notice the void of high quality monumental figurative paintings from the past that one could purchase and invented a style that was aimed at filling this void. Here Rut created his aged style of cracked canvasses and murals that mimic so eloquently Italian frescoes and figurative oils. "The one element evident in all of my paintings is the superficial patina or aging," which Rut creates with a variety of transparent and semitransparent glazes. This process creates the illusionistic and expressive beauty of each mythical figure.
" My paintings give people the ability to learn, respond, and feel comfortable with the classics," Rut says. "This gives me enough satisfaction to keep working for a lifetime."
Tomasz Rut
 Tomasz Rut Art can be found at the following Museums:
Alexander Brest Museum - Jacksonville, Florida
Mississippi Museum of Art - Jackson, Mississippi
Coral Springs Museum of Art - Coral Springs - Florida
The Schacknow Museum of Fine Arts, Inc - Plantation, Florida
Mobile Museum of Art - Mobile, Alabama
Zigler Museum of Art - Jenninga, Louisiana
Frye Museum of Art, Seattle, Washington
Wake Forest University Permanent Art Collection - Winston-Salem, North Carolina
Tomasz's Passport to Asia is in his Kitchen
 Tomasz Rut invites friends to his Hollywood home, the theme is distinctly Asian, from the food to the decor. On a recent Sunday evening, hand-rolled sushi with plum-flavored sake whetted guests appetites while Rut made laksa, a spicy Southeast Asian noodle soup.
Laksa is a specialty of the Peranakan or Straits-born Chinese community in Singapore and Malaysia. Peranakan literally means ''descendants'' in Malay, referring to the Chinese merchants who settled along the Straits of Malacca and married local Malay women. The men are called Babas and the women Nonyas.
The marriage of Chinese and Malaysian ingredients produced Nonya cuisine, a complex intermingling of typical Chinese ingredients with Malay herbs, spices and fragrant roots. Laksa is one of the most delicious examples, revered partly because it is considered painstaking to make. Laksa is the name for both the noodles and an herb used to flavor the spicy broth -- either rich coconut milk to make laksa lemak or a sour, tamarind-based version called asam laksa.
Laksa is derived from the ancient Persian term for noodle, lakhsha (meaning slippery), brought to Malaysia by Arab traders in the 13th century. In Southeast Asia, the herb, duan kesum, is commonly called laksa leaf because it is crucial to the flavor of the dish. It is found fresh in large Asian markets and smells like gingery cilantro with a hint of peppery mint.
Laksa is rarely found outside Peranakan homes, making it unusual that a Polish-born artist in South Florida has mastered it, growing many of the herbs and roots in his garden and grinding the spice paste himself. It is even more surprising that he has never visited Asia and learned to cook laksa and other Asian dishes from cookbooks.
''Food is a means of exploring the universe without necessarily traveling there,'' he says.
Rut (pronounced root) grew up in Warsaw, where his artist mother encouraged his painting. He studied art in Poland and New York, coming to Florida in 1988 to work on mural-restoration projects. Today his illusionary paintings have won him a following, and guests covet an invitation to one of his laksa parties.
He starts by grinding chiles, galangal, lemon grass and fresh turmeric root with shallots and shrimp paste in a blender. Next he reduces the broth left over from poaching chicken breasts, clams, curls of squid and jumbo shrimp. He fries the spice paste in a little oil to temper the rawness, adds the stock and coconut milk, simmers it and serves the aromatic yellow liquid over thin rice noodles, topping them with the strips of chicken and the seafood.
Rut garnishes the dish with blanched bean sprouts, shredded strips of omelet, cucumber and fresh ginger (in place of impossible-to-find wild ginger buds) and sprigs of laksa leaf with optional lashings of sambal olek (vinegary chile sauce). Served by candlelight in large aqua soup dishes at a long communal table, laksa is a one-dish tour de force, like the artist himself. Selamat makan! (Happy eating!)
A Fork on the Road/ Linda Bladholm
The Miami Hearald
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