Artist Marie Brozova recalls her public drawing event in Hradec Kralove.
I visited Hradec Kralove only a few times, always for a short while, and I was always amazed at the treasures of art nouveau architecture. Houses with whole legends depicted on their walls, while behind their windows you could see ordinary people living their lives. This sharp contrast between the world of ideal legends and the world of real people stood at the beginning of my Kradec Kralove inspirations.
In the drawing Forbidden Fruit you see Eve devouring an apple from the forbidden tree in the Garden of Eden. Behind the window you see real people and what they usually do with this precious fruit.
The idea for this drawing came to me before I had the chance to meet local inhabitants. From the first day I was overwhelmed by a multicolored wave of contradictory feelings, a strange mix of desire to be highly spiritual with the tension bubbling up from repressed aggression, and all this covered behind a mask of reserved behavior. But within this, you might spot scattered fragments of very sincere longing for beauty and understanding. So far my Defense of Colored Pencils did not have to be so serious; so far I did not have to defend myself so vehemently. Maybe that is the reason why the drawing is so vivid in colors, shining in all colors of the rainbow.
So far I did not experience such impudence that a man tried to find out, if it is really not possible to smudge colored pencils in my drawing against my explicit forbiddance. I had to deny my fragile fairylike nature and push his sticky-fingered hand away.
It never happened before that an unappreciated artist would come to threaten me, how can I be so audacious to claim, that using colored pencils is something unusual – when she herself uses them too!
It was also my first encounter with so called investigative journalist – a dissatisfied woman about fifty gave us one ironical question after another. She asked my husband, who helps me to carry out the whole project, if he doesn’t feel like a pimp. But apparently, we must have won her over by our invincible optimism, because she didn’t find any dirty linen and the article she was supposed to write about the Defense of Colored Pencils, was absolutely positive.
Equally this was the first time I was questioned by police, when an envious diversionist notified a police patrol about my peculiar behavior in the main square and demanded law and order. The misunderstanding was luckily quickly settled, people passing by started to shout: "Instead of looking for the criminals…" and the Defense of Colored Pencils was permitted to continue on the same spot until the end.
But I don’t want to be unfair; I have many positive memories of Hradec Kralove.
Some people came back every day, riding their bikes to see the progress. They thanked me for a beautiful, colorful week that brought some light into their city-gray reality. Many sensitive people, who happened to witness some of above mentioned misdemeanors or wild scenes around my easel, often brought me a small present, because they did not want me to remember their city in the bad light. An old man bought a drawing because, as he said, it was possible to read it instead of morning paper during his breakfast – to feel more comfortable.
I also found, that the gift of imagination is very rare.
I was visited by several sad-eyed mothers, sad about their inability
to tell their children fairy stories. When their children asked
them, they couldn’t make up anything. Then I met a little
boy, who just started to go to school. He was very intelligent,
but did not
have the notion of fantasy. He watched my drawings very carefully,
he shook his head and pondered over technical problems (How can
a water sprite have a glass of beer in his house under the water?)
and in the end he came to a conclusion: It’s all very
beautiful, but it’s all nonsense.
That was his last
word.
And what about the forbidden fruit?
We can look for the answer in a wise story about a thief in a raja’s orchard that I had read in the Sun Tearoom menu on the main square in Hradec Kralove. A young man did not want to work and made his living by stealing fruit in rich people’s orchards. Once he was lead by his hunger to the orchard of the great raja himself. But alas, he was so absorbed in the sweet taste, that he did not notice the raja coming with his guards. To save his life he decided to pretend a meditation and sat in a lotus position. Raja cried in surprise: "The holy man honored us with his presence! He chose our orchard for his meditation! Let’s go away not to disturb him!" The young thief was very glad that he had found the safest way of stealing fruit and went on practicing it for the rest of his life. He started to feel comfortable in the lotus position and one day, all of a sudden, he reached enlightenment.
VISIT MARIE BROZOVA’S VIRTUAL GALLERY
www.angels-fairies-unicorns.com,
where you’ll find both the drawings created during public events and in the studio.
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