Series: Wide Stripes – Coded Ornaments

The paintings in this series have both the stripes and the gaps of the same width between them. The vertical boundaries separating different colour fields have grown in importance. We start to perceive the original abscises as strips or surfaces. The image composition is converted into stripes where the “sunblind effect” visualises fifty percent of the initial composition of the painting. The original intersecting wavelet structure of the ornament is made illegible by the vertical dividing of the stripes, where the vertical line is directed from the centre of the stripe, through which passes the organic line. I went on to enhance the illegibility by trying to paint only two colour stripes, separated by equally wide white stripes. And I finally came to the paintings where there are only two stripes on the entire height of the picture. These stripes then alternate between white and colour parts. As several times before, it is enough for me if the viewer only subconsciously senses that there is a sort of hidden order, that it is not just an aesthetic decision. It is not about the disclosure of the order, but the notion, the feeling is important. I also wanted the paintings of this series to make a sensual impression with its strong colourfulness. I found that this impression is, perhaps against expectations, enhanced by a strict horizontal order.

I realised that the interest in the principles of natural repetitions and thus rhythm was the first serious interest on which I could base my painting. I was attracted by the countryside, fields, and woods around my village. It was not very romantic there and it is still not, but in something it is somehow basic and impressive. Perhaps in similar ratios of the sky strips, forests, and fields. I started to draw simple linear rhythms of the fields with the lines of furrows and rows of plants, and I began to write short poems whose themes were various names of rhythmic levels having distance between them (Hill – Forest – Moss / Day – Breath – Pulse / Dance – Scream – Moan). To me, what was of interest were mainly those rhythms that we can perceive naturally. I also remember that I was intrigued by the order and stylisation of the background of early Renaissance paintings, especially by tufts of grass and gardens.

Almost always when I draw or paint, the interest in rhythm is somewhere in the foreground.

We know that the ancient Greeks were convinced that rhythm is of divine nature and is the inspiration of poets. I think that the messages and contents that are carried by rhythm are incommunicable in any other way than by rhythm. I am then very interested in the tension between a certain freedom of a particular expression and the regularity of the ideal order. I realised this not only in my favourite late Gothic and early Renaissance paintings, but also in many others. From the Czech classics, whom I like very much, mainly for example in Josef Šíma or Josef Čapek.

When observing oriental ornaments, especially those used in construction, I realised that there I just missed the liveliness. But when talking about some of my paintings, I show that I use the regular division of the ring like they did.

2010