Hana Grodlová Sommerová↓

About the work

I don‘t have to reach for the ladder

Our house is old, we moved here three years ago. Even though we kept most of the furniture, we had to move a lot of things out of the rooms - magazines, candlesticks, mugs, mirrors… We had to open the windows to let the fresh air neutralize the place, so that we could start to breathe in it and consider it our own. The house is adjoined by a hedged backyard and a large garden behind it. Seven apple trees grow there. I don‘t know if it‘s the variety or the way the trees have been pruned, but they are low so that the apples can be picked from the ground. As a result, I don‘t have to use a ladder to reach them, but rather I crawl on the ground to pick them. The whole garden is lined with a line of currants, raspberries and other shrubs. The strawberry field has unfortunately been left overgrown, as have all the herb beds. I tend to forget about the garden in the winter, the view from the kitchen becoming the most frequent contact. In the pre-spring, the place reopens and demands attention, it doesn‘t wait and flourishes.

As an artist I make paintings, linocuts, photographs and visual installations. I map the surrounding space, continuously alternating between interior and plein air motifs. I create large-scale paintings in watercolor and ink on canvas or paper. In printmaking, I work with coloured co-printed linocuts. I tend to expressive morphology and exaggerate colour and luminosity in my scenes. Reality is filtered through the inner world of my mind and emotion. It is a synthesis of all these components. I thus create semi-abstract works, simplifying the shapes I see, stripping away details and using vibrant surfaces of colour. My diploma work consists of a series of paintings in which I combine ink painting and printing on canvas. The subjects are shots of my house and the adjacent garden where I live. I monitor my own territory from multiple angles. The home I create is my mirror. It prints back and shapes me.

I naturally turn and draw from the immediate reality. I let reality surprise me again and again. The main „theme“ and „drive“ of my work capturing space-time, by which I mean the character and atmosphere of places at the moment of encounter. When the scene shines visually before my eyes. So I do not conceive of landscape and interior in a symbolist or literary way. I do not perceive the depicted objects from their content, they do not refer to multiple other meanings. I look at space purely sensually and visually. I am after the relationships between things – objects. After what lies in the air. The life-giving energy between light and shadow and between masses. I let reality surprise me again and again. It is a way to maintain or build my sensitivity to my environment. To understand myself. If I am able to grasp the world around me, I can find my place in it and also maintain attention to everyday scenes and ordinary things. When walking through a house, a garden or a street, one is often not quite fully present in a given place. People carry all the chores and everyday hustle and bustle in their thoughts. When concentrating, there can be moments of awakening - of natural connection with the space, with the source. I record these experiences through painting and print.

I strive to perceive the world purely in color and light, to connect to it. My tool for this is „painterly perception“. The environment beats with relationships of colors, lights and structures. I observe them and look for the most effective and purest way to capture them. In the paintings, the viewer is offered a transport to the site through specific optics. The character of the space, the experience of it and the painting itself play a role. The viewer should not be transported to the depicted place through the illusion of realistic means. Rather, they should feel the atmosphere of the space and at the same time perceive the manner of the painted surfaces of the painting. Rapture and focus are provided here. A poetics of everyday life is offered.