After more than three years of traveling with my project The Defense of Colored Pencils I can still see many regular visitors who would prefer if my public drawing events were held only in appropriate places, in galleries, libraries and historic town centers. Whenever I dare to cross these borders and bring my project to places that are so called "commercial", I am often criticized even by my die-hard fans. They roll their eyes heavenwards, and at best they do not mention anything in front of me in a well mannered way. But the main purpose of the project Defense of Colored Pencils is not only to show what can be created with this humble children's toy. I often see that it is even more important to help all the lost people, who suffer from emptiness in their souls despite their growing prosperity. These days it is extremely easy to loose the joy of life, to break the ties to the child we once used to be. For most people any thought of creative activity seems to be beyond reach. But creativity of all kinds is the most essential source of the joy of life and fulfillment. Very often it takes only a few kind words, half an hour of free time and colored pencils, and then the great adventure of creativity can begin again.
These seeking people that you can find pushing their full carts in shopping centers, have often lost any hope that they could find something valuable in modern art. No wonder, when young artist present their daring work at the exhibitions titled: "The feelings are anachronism" and when art experts say that beauty in art is only kitsch. This kind of hungry seekers you meet most often at commercial places and the medicine of creativity which is easily accessible is the most valuable especially for them. Their reactions to my work are very spontaneous, they do not pretend anything. We often discuss the great paradox of our times – the more reasons to be happy we have, the less we are able to enjoy them. In contrast to that, we often think back to the long lost days of our childhood, when everything seemed to be beautiful, and the time of looking forward to something was even more precious than the long-awaited moment of fulfillment. All these memories and recollections lead to the same conclusions – the pleasure we feel when we use our cherished things of everyday use is more important than their financial value. Our real wishes and dreams are often very far from the requirements dictated by fashion trends and social status.
I accepted the invitation to the Pilsen Expo "Woman and Home" because of the citizens of this welcoming city. My public drawing event in Pilsen in 2005 was very successful and I created one of my most popular drawings in Pilsen Research Library – The Book of Life. I was surprised by the number of people who had remembered me. They came to visit me even to the commercial expo – often against their own conviction. An old lady refused to pay the entrance fee because she had come to visit ONLY Ms. Brozova with her project. She threatened the clerks with her walking stick, and in the end, succeeded to get inside without paying. With the feeling of satisfaction she spent her time at my exhibition, and she did not care a bit about the whole fair. But there were even more people who came to see the exposition and did not expect to see art, that would touch them by the unpretentious beauty and clarity, as many of them told me.
In the National House in Prague Vinohrady The Defense of Colored Pencils got a generous space for my public drawing event and the exhibition of my new works. I was situated in a large hall under the glass ceiling creating the best possible light for an artist. The theme I had chosen for the drawing planned for both expos was pleasurable – "Mommy the Apple Tree", another piece of my cycle "The Souls of Trees". A smiling mommy is showing to her little boy how beautiful the world is, and the boy, sitting safely in his mommy's lap, can perceive with his clear senses not only the tangible beauty of ripe apples in the garden, but also the soft spiritual beauty of beings that are not visible for our adult logical mind. The idea was very clear in my head and I asked myself why there were rainbow colored peacock feathers hidden among the leaves. But than my friend Lili came and brought me a beautiful peacock feather as an unexpected gift. I got another charming sign that there are no accidents whatsoever, and the world can be even more beautiful, when we do not try to meddle in perfect visions coming to us from the world of imagination.
I would like to end with a beautiful story – in the National House in Prague Vinohrady I was visited by my most prolific "student", admirable lady Marta, who met my project previous year (at a commercial spot, of course). Thanks to colored pencils she managed to revive the full joy of life even in her senior years. She brought me one of her very skilled drawings and also an album from her childhood asking me to draw a little sketch in it. Usually I must refuse these wishes, because my drawing technique is extremely detailed and time-consuming, but for lady Marta I was willing to make an exception. In the evening I opened her album and I went through the yellowed pages, gasping at the voice of past. The little verses and saying were very similar to those, we used to write down to our friends' albums, but these were fifty years old. It was a curious feeling, when my colored pencils were sliding on the surface of the old glossy paper, not very successfully, but I outlined the sun-artist with colored pencils. Lady Marta told me she wanted to bequeath her album to her grandchildren. And who knows, maybe one day in fifty years from now, there will be a painter marveling at my little sketch, just as I marveled at the sight of a little sketch by a famous Czech writer and illustrator of children books Ondrej Sekora. He visited Marta's school and he left a small picture of a running cat in her album.
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