About/Me
Welcome to my digital Art Brut Gallery.
I am from Ostrava in the Czech Republic and have been living with my family for 26 years in the USA, where I discovered Art Brut and Intuitive Art for the first time, along with American Neo-Expressionism, and African masks and art, which once defined the birth of Modern Art - something I previously had no idea about.
I was surprised by how interconnected all of these ‘raw art styles’ were - especially since I had never heard of them before. At the same time, they reminded me so much of the subconscious kids’ drawings I deeply love.. I still consider children’s art as one of the best out there, and I think there should be galleries of kids’ art in every town :)
Art Brut became something completely fascinating and unworldly for me. I couldn’t stop researching it, bookmarking every possible study, or even mentioning, about it. Created by people who were never ‘classically trained’ and never wanted to be known, or even found, therefore free from cultural rules and ‘art trends’, and from trying to fit into them. Their art offered a pure emotional honesty and authenticity, a deep drop into their private mind.. but only when they were discovered by someone else for the world to see! For me, it also captures a strong shared human feelings, mainstream art sometimes -> often misses.
In the Czech Republic, I worked for 8 years for advertising agencies, as an ‘idea maker’, which was literally the job description I had on my business card in the 90s, while I was also doing my own art and ceramics, always trying to ‘fit the trends and the groups around’ :) It didn’t work for me, so I stopped trying and started to do ‘just my stuff for no one’.
That’s why I was so fascinated that there is never any ‘premeditation or calculation’ on Art Brut artists’ part, no need to ‘make it’ for the market or even the gallery, their work is ‘just’ a very intense and profound dive into complicated beautiful inner worlds. While they themselves, as well as no one else, can explain what is the driving force, motivation and energy behind their creations, which are standing alone as a pure expression of a singular individuality.
I showed the artworks of my favorite Art Brut artists many times on Facebook, which also included two Czechs: Lubos Plny and Anna Zemankova. I found them in a book that was published about these two in Japan!
So when continuing with my ‘stuff for no one’, after we moved, I came across Jean Dubuffet and his Art Brut movement. I was immediately drawn into it, and identified with it within seconds; it was like meeting a twin I never knew I had :) I couldn’t get enough of those unique and unexpected styles Art Brut artists were able to create, because they never worked within formal, safe and conventional boundaries. Encountering this movement gifted me with the ‘feeling of sudden belonging and validation’, and it also enlightened me that my independent studies and artwork done in solitude count. It felt like finally arriving home.. even though I was overseas :)
In December 2022, I made my first digital finger doodle, by drawing on the screen of my iPhone. It was an image for my 2023 New Year Facebook post. I used a selfie, which I appropriated right in the phone with my finger, in a simple iPhone photo editor tool, called Markup, which comes with every iPhone. I needed to explain this, because people are still asking me what app I am using :)
It was at a time when we moved, and I lost for a while a space to create analog art, so I went with what was available to me: a chair and the phone. I liked the result and the ‘limitation’, where I had just a photo, a simple digital Markup tool, with a few brushes and a color palette, a little iPhone screen and my index finger.
I started to make finger doodles on my older photos I had on my iPhone, and the ‘challenge to find something in them and bring it out’, only by a finger drawing or coloring on the screen, was very exciting. I felt like creating a digital version of Arte Povera and Conceptual Art together, while the ‘main idea’ was to find something in every photo I randomly picked, therefore the final image always came out as ‘an accident’ and was secondary.
I later made new photos, but all my finger doodles were created this way because looking for a hidden image by following the branches, leaves, power lines and cracks in the road, or the shape of the pan and pancakes, because the inner worlds also have to be funny sometimes :), was the most important and thrilling part of this concept.. maybe a ‘little vendetta’ to AI generated art :)
I continued to doodle every day, even though I over time established the space to create analog art, and I am still doing it. Sometimes it takes me a few minutes, sometimes hours, sometimes one image took a few days to finish. After 3 and half years, I made more than 600 images. Not all of them made it to Facebook, where I tried daily, or every 2 or 3 days to post them, and not all of them made it to this website, but I tried to organize and put together as many as possible, and numbered them from the first to the last one.
On the left is my New Year Facebook post image for 2022, made from my analog art taped to the wall of our house before we moved. On the right is my first finger doodle, the New Year Facebook post for 2023, which started my 3 and half years of doodling :)
November 6th, 2024
East to West, I found the rest, on a thick circular pillow; but then I’ve got lost in its maze.
Jean Dubuffet 3D doodle sculpture in Chicago
French artist Jean Dubuffet coined the term Art Brut -> Raw Art, in 1945 and the idea to start the Art Brut movement came to him when he toured psychiatric clinics, and personally encountered patients’ art collections. He was completely amazed by the strong spontaneous expressions these ‘unfiltered’ works of art held, and he felt that no one who is following schools’ academic rules, trends and elite tastes can’t ever create something so powerful.
Jean Dubuffet believed that the ‘art of outsiders’ was more insightful and more meaningful than traditional fine art because it was ‘uncorrupted by cultural conditioning’, and driven only by a genuine inner necessity rather than social ambition. He believed that only Art Brut can possess instinctive pure freedom.
And I still believe it too :)