Jindrichuv Hradec (or) the White Lady Ghost at the 15th Meridian

Artist Marie Brozova´s recollections of her second drawing event in Jindrichuv Hradec 2005.

Though the summer was taking wing towards fall, I could smell spring lilac blossoms and the lightness of foolishness in the air, welcoming all the dreamers, fantasts, amateur astronomers pointing their telescopes at the comets, and lunatics, wandering in their dreams on the top of the crooked roofs hand in hand with the white lady ghost. I pictured all these and many others in the drawing titled "The Local Meridian"that was created in front of a friendly Pension At the 15th Meridian, in a relaxed atmosphere and harmony.

My project gained effective publicity, Jindrichuv Hradec is a very cultural city, and the mayor, Mr Karel Matousek, opened my public drawing by a ceremonious cutting of the ribbon.

Visitors to this project, local as well as tourists (some from distant Shanghai) were in tune with my colors, on the same wavelength of imagination. They looked for parallels with their own world of fantasy and I was in my element among them. Even the newspapers published almost poetic reports about my work. Many visitors were skilled artists, who did not regard colored pencils as a mere children’s toy. They used colored pencils on a daily basis as their favorite means of expression.

I especially remember an old man, walking with crutches, who kept coming back to me. We talked about colors, he appreciated I am not afraid to express my inner feelings in my drawings. He praised my work, talking in superlatives, claimed that I defeated all the painters. He turned out to be a grandson of a famous Czech painter, but he drew drawings only in his free time. Not until a complicated surgery, during which he survived his own death, did he start to draw and paint his visions of paradise, that he had brought back with him from the other side. He tried to picture the indescribable light shining from within all things. He showed me a cycle of his humble and thorough drawings of the Stations of the Cross and a cycle of chapels of crucifixion.

I admired his tenaciousness against adversity. And then I was lucky to meet his wife, a serene and wise woman, who was able to support his fragile artist soul. As if I saw me and my husband after forty years, but in the opposite roles. May such happiness meet our lives too.

Every evening we wandered the romantic streets around the church and along the river Nezarka, that was mirroring the lamplight. We scarcely met anyone, only people walking their dogs, and once we even met two burglars dragging a copper eave they stole somewhere. I looked at my husband, and we burst into laughter.

How could nutcakes ever be tired?