Konopiste Castle The Biggest Drawing Created by Colored Pencils

Artist Marie Brozova’s memoir from public drawing event of the record size drawing

The Konopiste Castle is one of my favorite places. I have been visiting it for as long as I remember. The Castle is surrounded by the most mysterious and a little bit neglected park. Before I went to school I had seen all the miracles only small children are allowed to see. I don’t know why, but I used to fall in love with statues at the time of my early childhood, Jan Zizka statue in Prague was my favorite, of course, followed by president Zapotocky statue (funny choice, I admit), dog-handler statue from Konopiste and St. George everywhere I could see him carved in stone, especially in Prague Castle.

St. George stands out in my memories like a hero from fairy tales, no wonder, he was always pictured killing a dragon. I knew his face very well from my dreams, swarthy and noble, with gentle features. I started to remember my childhood memories when my friend Jim, visiting my public drawing in Konopiste, found it strange that a cold-blooded warrior should have a gentle expression on his face. It took me by surprise, I had to ask that little girl with pig tails I once used to be. She whispered: St. George must kill the dragon, but he doesn’t want to. There is no hatred in his act, only compassion. But little Marie couldn’t have told it that way. These are only children’s deep feelings translated into adult words.

The drawing „St George Killing the Dragon of Winter“” was created just in front of the main entrance gate to the castle, near the bear pit. The bear called Kazimir and his ursine wife Masha went through a period of very severe altercations. They slammed the door, he refused to let her in, they couldn’t get divorced and in addition to all these complications, they had to listen to ubiquitous clamor. "Masha! Kazimir!" the tourists demanded trying to make an outstanding photo. It must have been the highlight of Kazimir’s life, when a peacock jumped into his pit and was transformed into a tidy sum of colored feathers in a minute.

The atmosphere of this public drawing was special, almost physical. People felt the urge to touch me, clap me on the back, and tell me their personal worries. A self appointed faith healer gave my hair a gentle stroke, and I suddenly felt very strange crystal waterfall above my head. I started to be very exhausted from my public drawing tour; as if my body lost its substance, it felt penetrable, but also clarified. If there were any energetic blocks, they were dissolved by the hundreds of people watching me at the process of creation. I was in a specific mood between exhaustion and redemption, one night we traveled home to Kutna Hora and listened to an unexpected open-air concert of one of our favorite music group Cechomor that was held in the park in front of our windows. Dreams and reality melted together, and I felt, more than ever before, that I was not an author, only an interpreter between the world of people and the world of ideas, an apostle of stars, as my farther used to call me with a smile, when I was small. And the picture grew bigger day by day, so did the audience. Visitors were not discouraged by the record summer heat. Colorful peacocks dared to come close to me and walked around my drawing. The rain did not come until the last day. Members of the Dobry Den Agency arrived to document the finishing touches of the record size drawing and rain drops kept falling from the leaves of old lime trees on me as well as on St. George drawn on paper.

We got a parting present from the castle; we were invited to a castle tour and I got an unexpected present from the fortune, for a short while I was allowed to see all the things in children’s eyes. I was greeted by the old well remembered ghosts living in paintings, statues and armor. They asked me: Where have you been so long? And in the end I discovered the model of the St. George face, I have been cherishing in my heart for as long as I remember – in a gothic woodcut engraving, one of the oldest images of this chevalier saint, portrayed on the black horse, because black color in the old times meant fertility of the freshly open earth in spring.