"Do what you love." • Michal Janovský

Meet Michal Janovský, an artist from Česká Lípa, who has become one of the outstanding personalities of the contemporary Czech painting scene. The artist is known for his approach to naturalism and his fascination with chiaroscuro, and his works have the air of the old masters. Yet he maintains a distinctive style that mixes tradition with modern elements, often balancing between humour, provocation and deeper philosophical questions. What is his creative process, what inspires him and how does he perceive the contemporary role of the artist in the digital world? We talked about all this with Michal Janovský in the following interview.

You can listen to the full interview here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OzfW9s4svg4

Michal, where did your love for art come from?

So my love for art, just like painting and drawing, I had that since I was very young. When my friends would come to me to go out, I would say I didn't want to, and I would doodle at home. Then that road to adulthood went through some detours at times, that I didn't paint for a while and then I painted again, but it's from a young age.

Did you inherit your talent for painting from an ancestor?

I don't know of anyone outright drawing, my mom used to draw Disney characters for us when we were little, but that's about all I know of in our family, so I'm about the only phenomenon in our family.

And did your parents recognize that you had talent from a young age?

Yes, they tried to guide me to do that, to put me in art schools, to develop a little bit, and I remember to this day a memory that is maybe more than 30 years old, but when we came to the art school and I saw how the kids were drawing a rag, a donut, and I thought, "No way." And so I went back home again. I told my parents I wanted to draw my dinosaurs and battles and knights based on movies and I went my own way. But I definitely had that support at home.

We just wanted to ask you about your favourite childhood motif.

So it was the dinosaurs, and then I remember seeing Braveheart with Mel Gibson in fifth grade, and I loved the battles in it, and I drew it at school. I think sometime in second grade they showed my drawings of Alien and Predator to my parents at parent-teacher conferences, and my mom still has a drawing of a diver with his leg bitten off. So I've been doing scary stuff that's a little bit of that otherworldly stuff since I was a kid, and that's carried over into adulthood.

And did you have a childhood professional dream, or did you already know then that you would follow an artistic path?

As a kid, I probably didn't think about a profession at all. As there are these clichés that kids at the age of seven want to be an astronaut or a garbage man, I don't even remember thinking about it now. And I don't think I've ever dreamed of being a painter.

And then what did your parents say when you decided to become an artist?

It's not about deciding that I'm going to be a painter now, it's a really long process that started basically from a young age. I had art school then glass school and around puberty all art stopped being fun for me. And when I came back to it and started drawing again, at first it was just portraits and simpler things. From there, some of the vision of doing it for a living started to form, and then better paintings and my own ideas started to emerge. My parents are of course happy for that and it warms my heart to see them proud and I feel a lifelong support in them.

That's great, family support is definitely important. You mentioned that you graduated from glass school and then you became famous for your pastel work, but now you are an oil painter. How did you get from glass to pastels to oil painting?

I stopped being interested in glass at school, where I discovered that I had no feeling for it.

And have you tried blowing glass?

I tried cutting and engraving, I didn't try glass painting, but it never attracted me much. Then the glassmaking phase ended, a few paintings a year and then it took a turn for the better when my wife gave me my first set of pastels for Christmas and they were two smaller sets from KOH-I-NOOR. I relegated it to socks at the time and my dad said, "Well, give it a try, you might like it." And I know that by the holidays I had already started to try something and I enjoyed it. All of a sudden, a meter-long painting was done in, like, two days, and it didn't look bad. The first year I drew monochrome, i.e. one-colour, paintings and I didn't go into colour at all. It was only after a year that I started to add colour and expand my portfolio of drawings and it started to gain its fans.

Your wife is also an artist, isn't she?

We met at school, but he's not into it anymore and has other interests. But we got to know each other there, so she relates to it and I sometimes consult my paintings with her and the feedback is good.

And how would you introduce your current work to readers?

Rather, I'll just say what I like about the paintings and why I do it that way. I like the stories, I like the realism, but to have some kind of handwriting in it when you look at it. I paint naturally, so that I enjoy it and you can tell that it's painted. Sometimes there are deliberate distortions of the bodies, garish colours and stuff, that's probably the main unifying element. And I like the black humour, the contrast between light and shadow, between the subjects. Also the combination of good and evil, I like to work with the details of the pretty and the ugly.

Sounds interesting. Where do you get inspiration for your work?

Sometimes it's books, for example, because I read a lot, but I don't expect that when I sit down at the table something good will immediately appear, it doesn't work. Sometimes it happens that something comes to me spontaneously, but it's mostly influenced by what I surround myself with. Not just books, but maybe family and nostalgia.

Books are definitely a great source of inspiration. And while you're creating, what art supplies do you use, do you have favorites?

Maybe it's just the brushes, the canvas, the paints, I even got something from my dad and I can feel the fatherly love there and that in itself has a story. Then also pencils, watercolors, tempera, but primarily brushes and paints I guess. And I still work with the pastels, even though I do oil painting, because I sketch a lot and it takes dozens of hours with oils.

Some time ago you collaborated with KOH-I-NOOR, you participated in the development of a fixative and a set of dust pastels. How do you remember this collaboration?

I'm glad it came about, and I felt we could move some things along. I received a few samples, so it took a while, but it worked out and the final fixative is really perfect. In hindsight, it's a good collaboration and I'm glad for it.

And did it help you at the time that KOH-I-NOOR as a big brand was able to get you some exposure?

I don't know, I enjoy it, but I live in a kind of bubble in my studio, then once in a while I post something on Facebook, but now I haven't been active there for maybe 3 months. So I don't really perceive these things as being known anywhere.

Last year you completed a commission for the Jirásek Theatre in Česká Lípa, how did you find working in the theatre?

I didn't paint directly in the theatre, I prepared it in the studio and it's another collaboration that I'm very happy and proud to have been approached by the mayor and I'll be happy if people accept it as part of the theatre.

Speaking of theatre, did you discover anything inspiring during this collaboration?

I was inspired by the theatre, I wanted to create a decorative painting. I tried first the figure of Jirásek, then the Hussite trilogy, and it all seemed like depressing, sad history. When you come to the theatre like that, you want something nice and positive. So then I thought of Karel Jaromír Erben's Bouquet and the four seasons, four colour schemes in which theatrical elements can be hidden, and that appealed to me.

That's a great choice. How do you look at digital art forms, do you also create digitally?

No, no, I'm kind of an old-timer, I have LPs and CDs, I like it to rustle when it comes to books. I don't condemn digital drawing, but it's beyond me, I like the classic processes and having the process from start to finish. I enjoy it a lot and I don't do it in the end for the end result, I do it for the process.

You also mentioned that you purposely leave some more pronounced brushstrokes in your paintings to show that they are handmade. Do you think that in the future it will be possible to distinguish between what was painted by a human and what was created by artificial intelligence?

Well, it will probably be harder to do it by machine, and artificial intelligence now works with the idea that it is perfect, but it will increasingly work with human imperfection. I'm going to be all the more determined to stand my ground and hold my ground. I feel even around me that people appreciate it more when the art is really genuine.

Can we see your finished paintings anywhere now?

The exhibition in Prague has been postponed for a year, which I'm sorry about, but next year there will be two exhibitions in Moravia and I think it might happen there. One of them should be in Olomouc and the second one in the spring, a month later in Opava, so I hope it will all work out. I have a lot of friends in Moravia and I like to go back there.

We found out that you paint, exhibit and organize guided tours, conduct workshops and repair small sacral monuments. How do you manage it all?

Well, it's a lot of activities to recharge the batteries, and it's just about doing something different every now and then, and I enjoy that immensely. Not only with regards to the financial side of it, I have more covered, but as I rotate it, I don't actually get bored.

What does a commission have to do to interest you?

That it is unconventional, of course the financial aspect is also important, but most importantly it has to be interesting.

How do you think painters in the Czech Republic will live in 2024?

Well, I don't know about others, but I think that when someone gets to the stage where they make a living just doing what they enjoy, that's one of the best things that can happen. When I'm at home I look forward to going to the studio, and when I'm in the studio I look forward to going home again, so I'm always looking forward to going somewhere.

That's what we like to hear. Is there anything you would advise your younger self and aspiring artists?

I probably wouldn't change anything right now because I'm happy and I probably wouldn't listen to myself anyway. Well, to a stranger? Doing what you enjoy is probably the most important thing and it will either find its customers or it won't.

Have you had a creative crisis too?

There's been plenty of those and they've been at some slightly regular intervals, I used to struggle and try to repaint it and then you'd get paintings that were completely rubbish. It's just that when you're not enjoying it, you slap it around to get it done. Nowadays I approach it differently and when I feel burnt out I find another hobby for a while.

It's definitely better to find something else for a while than to burn out. Do you exhibit anywhere else abroad, besides Slovakia?

No, like every now and then a painting has gotten out, maybe in a group show, but everything has its time and I feel that even with this work I'm not completely focused on it. I'm still playing with Czech words and themes that are familiar to us, and I don't know how I would explain it in Germany, for example.

Speaking of themes, how do you deal with the question of originality in art and do you have a line or balance between inspiration and imitation?

Well that's a bit of a difficult question, for me the inspirations are often obvious, but I always try to give it my own stamp. For me, inspiration in art was and is necessary for art to evolve.

And if you had the opportunity to collaborate with an artist, living or deceased, who would it be and why?

I don't know if I've ever been asked that question, but probably not. I would probably see it as two roosters in one junkyard at that point. Somehow I've never quite gotten into it and I confess, I'm not really into it either.

Do you have a ritual or habit before painting that helps you get into the flow?

The first thing I do when I get to the studio is put on some music, at least one or two records. Mostly the older rock or rock and roll stuff, and then I'll do spoken word. So my ritual is to take my time in the morning, maybe build something for half an hour and then go paint.

One final piece of wisdom. I'm not really good at spilling it out of my sleeve like this, but I guess the one thing I follow every day is "Always do what you enjoy."

That's a nice piece of wisdom, thank you so much for the interview and we look forward to seeing more of your work. :)

Thank you also.