Contemplations on my own works

Attempting to scan through my art work, I see a kind of classification on the basis of the themes and the painting techniques may not come amiss.

My landscape paintings are inspired and originate within a mutual relationship with various environs and milieus. It is the North Bohemian region that has become one of the very first inspiration sources to me. The cycle "Footprints Within The Landscape" presents its lyrical face: deserted, depleted and silenced land awaiting its own reclamation. It is a land of dead lakes, forgotten roads, rampant bushes. A view taken from above, in an eye of a bird, goes directly into the naked muscles of the skinless land. The colour palett is reduced. This cycle contains the oil and in the mixed media works always arising out of the same theme.

Other of the regions very close to my heart are the Šumava Mountains, Boletce Forrest and Prachatice surroundings especially. Same as up in the North it is the expressivity of each of the settings that rules: rough nature and wilderness prevailing the places of the original civilisation and inhabitants who had passed times ago. The direct clash of both the phenomenons, culture versus nature or the presence and past if you will, takes its most powerfull contrasts especially inside the former military zones. Along such an absorbing fact, one is deeeply touched by the beauty of nature untouched here by the rivers Blanice, Vydra and Rasnice, by the dreamy forest pools and silence sylvan nooks. My Šumava "story" makes up an extensive pastels and oils cycle. It is the color here what becomes the (be)holder of the content presented in the dense textures of the paintings. Many of my watercolor paintings have arisen spontaneously along my wanderings in the mountain nature, similarly as during my journeys along the Berounka, Ohre and Strela rivers.

The "Skull Landscapes" cycle has originated within the limestone mountain range of the Palava region in South Moravia, the land of fine wine makers. This area appeals with its special amorphous structures evoking a shapes of the animal bones and skulls of the prehistoric remnants found there by archaeologists. The second inspiration source then were the photos by American photographer Irving Penn. My "Skulls" are made in the oil of a monochorme color pallet combined with the glaze painting technique, and in the monochrome pastels as well.

Later of my landscape paintings bring my "Sweden Cycle" and also the extensive "Landscape Contemplations" cycle. "Sweden" presents the metaphysical depths of a landscape space, islands horizon, borderless sea. Minimalist and simple symbolic language of the moveless and monumental nature and life forms, all embraced by the oldest craddle - sea - for ages. The "Landscape Contemplations" continue my dialogue with the first inspirations found in the Northern Bohemia now seen differently during the Autumn time of both gloomy or bright daylight touches. Now it was the light reflections of the sky, water planes and bare torsos of the earth. A feeling "what is up is down as well" rules here again within the monochrome color pallete and glaze painting technique in the oils and pastels.

My portraits present first of all the people I know closely - family, friends and inspiring personalities. The "Landscapes of Face" attest to the individuality and psychological depths of a human. The area of the picture represents to me a diary, a landscape in which I inscribe the suffering, naturalness and life destiny together with the temperament of a person protrayed. The applied art devices and the form of a message are tailored to the need to express the fixed idea of the content. I am proceeding from the distinct thick color layers on to the gentle glaze painting techniques and color hue transitions up to the monochromatic scale of the subtle color tones.

It is also the painting format what respects the content of a message. The range then derives from the classical gauge 1:1 for a face size, up to the large-sized formats demanding a change in the attitude to the person portrayed. This part of work represents mostly a very intimate confessions about my relations to the person painted. Often I am used to continue a given portrait in the other painting techniques like pastel or mixed media, collages, crumplages, etc.

The figural work follows frequently the "myth - body - landscape" connection as expressed clingingly by a young Czech philosopher Petr Kůrka. The figure bears within the basic trans of such sources.

Besides what is said above I am inspired also by the stories from the Greece mythology and from the Bible, which both represent the timeless values of a testimony to me. Naturally there is a personal or literature experience of my own too. Yet, the way the portrait work is created always depends on the inspiration coming from the interior of the content.

Pastel belongs to my favorite and often used techniques. Whole cycles arise continuing the idea of a person´s portrait in oil. Pastel opens up more relaxed and immediate levels of a creative process. Either it is drawn in the dry base, or in the wet, and or in the combinations of both, often in several layers, it gets close to the oil painting techniques, yet anew. The cycles with themes of nature, figure, portrait motives are created within the expression scale from the pure realistic form up to the abstract works.

Water color paintings are the living reports from my travels and wanderings. As said above they originate spontaneously, right at the spot, facing the motive as an impressive and expressive evidence of an experience. The specificity of this technique, demanding the action and cooperation with more or less wet paper surface and the compression of a message via irreversible touch, is always very thrillling adventure for me. It demands a synthesis of the consideration. Water color has brought the cycles from Czech and Moravia regions, yet also from Greece, Italy, Sweden, France.

The mixed media and collages make up an individual chapter within my art work. Especially when I find out some other attitude is necessary to grasp the idea of a given content the other fine art techniques give me a chance to get there from a different angle. The "Frozen Pond" cycle opens up one of the expressive assamblages collection in the papers cut through in layers to express the cracked ice stories executed in the "white within wite" color tonality. Other mixed media cycle "Veil of Veronica", inspired and dedicated to my long-term ill mother, contemplates around a phenomena of the pain and harm: here I engaged a complex materials and techniques using pastel at several kinds of paper, surgery gloves, india ink, a.o., so that the vigorous touchés express one´s own pain and helplessness for not being able to chase the destiny of one´s closest human. The "Transmutation" cycle inspired by the famous Franz Kafka story is executed in the crumplage art technique where I work within the monochromatic color palette and fine texture of the silk paper to express the feeling of vulnerability along the transmutation process.

Further mixed media and collage cycles continue my landscape inspirations by the Northern Bohemia region and my vision of the "footprints within the landscape". Facing the bare, naked landscape relief I worked with the poured sands, ashes and paper to focus the haptic impression of the terrain. In the Swedish cycle of snowy and ice-covered lakes sleeping in an endless sleep of their own within the metaphysically opened space it is the contrast between a simple symbolics of the large form compared to a filigree detail. One of the main inspirations here was the geomorphology of the giant stones in the scandinavian nature, evoking the skull bones.