30

It was my birthday on 24. 2. I can´t believe I´m thirty years old already!
We celebrated with friends and it was great. We had a lot of fun, great food and I got some splendid presents.
I also took these photos of myself - I was inspired by some modern style paintings. I like to flip through the Pijoan art books a lot these days.

in process all the time

With every painting there is a moment when I think I´m never going to finish it. It just seems impossible, too difficult. But somehow, I usually manage to finish them in the end. The house in the front is almost finished now, making me happy. The one in the back still worries me a lot :). Ideas for new paintings are pouring into my head all the time.

London fashion week

Bright, colourful, crazy, daring, 20s, floral, historic, folkloric...
I could´t help but click through some of the shows... I love it all. More London fashion week.

my two cuties

Sometimes I´m exhausted and often tired, especially mornings are tough... but mostly caring about these two is fine, filled with joy and cuddling. Having a baby besides the big one is definitely challenging. I can´t say I´m bored :). Anna is a very active and loud baby, which makes things harder, obviously, but she´s also very cheerful. She likes a good laugh - she gets that after me, probably :).
Sometimes I get nervous and stressed - especially when preparing to leave the house and trying to be quick. With small children, it´s anything but quick :). Sometimes I´m tired like a horse and my whole body aches. In that case I wrap myself in a blanket (head included) and lie on the floor... the monkeys can jump and scream around - I don´t care!
It´s definitely a huge adventure. I´m also very lucky to have a husband who works at home most times. He may not always help me much, but he´s there, if anything happened.

baking

We were baking today. I had intentions to eat only one, but you know how that goes :). Very tasty cinnamon rolls.

the slide

My husband´s childhood slide near his hometown. It´s a monster, very high, very old, now damaged a bit. The balustrade is missing, among other things. I climbed up the slide while I was pregnant last winter (I kind of can´t believe I went up there :).
I´m hesitant about posting my new completed paintings, because I´m going to have an exhibition in May and I want some paintings to be a surprise.. but I guess not much people are reading this blog. I´ll see with the other ones. I feel very happy these days. The kids are great, we can go for a walk every day or run in the garden next to the church, we have great friends, and I´m going to have an exhibition. Every day I paint a little and that´s what I love to do at most. When I was a small kid, people often asked me what I want to be when I grow up? A painter, was what I answered for the first time. I loved to paint and draw. Later, I became more aware of what I answered - I still loved to paint, but was ashamed to tell anybody I want to be an artist. Even later, I started to believe I should do something different; in high school I loved art and everything connected to it, but I was lazy to do something more with it, to work hard or prepare for a college. I was also very busy with maths and physics, causing me much trouble. Then I went to college, doing something completely different and immediately I saw that it was a complete mistake. There were many things to do, but I got back to painting during that time. There were days when I was depressed and unfulfilled; I wanted to find and do something that brings joy to me, but also something that others will appreciate. I´m still a bit confused, but I think I have that something now and I´m living that childhood dream a bit.

four seasons

I painted four seasons - spring, summer, autumn and winter - on four small (20x20cm) canvases.
I disliked the autumn one (my favourite season!) a lot, so I painted over it again:

Now it´s complete.
Also, I´ve decided to celebrate my upcoming birthday... Last time I celebrated my birthday was when I was 10, so I´m a bit nervous! :) I invited many people and they all want to come, which is great, but I´ve never done anything like this. I hope it will be ok and everybody´s going to like this party.

Paula Modersohn - Becker: a tragic story

I´ve read an interview with Georg Baselitz lately (maybe more about that some other time), and although he said he thinks women are worse artists than men (!), he named few women artists he likes. Among them, there was Paula Modersohn - Becker. I´ve heard about her earlier, but didn´t remember much, so I decided to find more. What a moving, sad story... Of course, there is many important "art information", such as that she was a part of a painter community in Worpswede, and friend with many important artists of her time. But the thing that struck me most is her story as a mother. She wanted to have a child for a long time, and after she overcame some problems in her marriage, she finally became a mother to a little girl. But only 18 days after the baby was born she died. I found somewhere that according to a tradition she had to lie in bed after the labour for at least two weeks, which caused her death. She died after she got up from her bed to care about her baby. She was only 31 years old.
Today I´m extremely tired and my back aches a lot from carrying the baby all time time, but reading something like this makes me incredibly grateful for what I have and can do.

St Apollinaire in Classe

In 2007, we went to Italy, to Ravenna to look at the gorgeous mosaics the place is famous for. There are about six places (mostly chuches) with beautiful mosaics, but this one - St Apollinaire in Classe - made the biggest impression on me. I remember just standing there, gazing at the beautiful colours, the shades of green, the scenery - I was breathless. I wanted to take a photo of the mosaic with my eyes and head.
Luckily, we have the internet :).

new curtain

We have a new curtain in the living room. I made it during the last two days in kind of a dirty way. No pressing along the way, I just pressed the whole thing after it was completed. Actually it didn´t matter in this case, as the result is very good and it saved me a ton of time :). It feels great to have a curtain again after a long time without one! The fabric is from Ikea, great price and I love the print. It reminds me of a painting by my favourite artist Camilla Engman:

Looks a lot like it, right?

Michel Delacroix

I love to look at houses, I love architecture... and cities. I love these paintings by Michel Delacroix. Fifteen years ago I went to Belgium, and at one antique shop I bought a postcard with one of his paintings. We had it on the wall at our first home (actually a student dorm room), but I probably lost the postcard then. Few days ago I saw his paintings again, and I still really like them. Tiny details, charming little scenes, chimneys, bold colourways. And Paris, of course :). I´ve been to Paris once, and I don´t remember much (I went there during my two weeks in Belgium). I was very ill and had problems breathing, the trouble was we slept in a tiny apartment, that was filled with cigarette smoke. I almost couldn´t breathe at night and I seriously thought I was going to die there. I wanted to get up in the middle of the night and escape the smoke filled box. But, I didn´t, and, somehow, I survived :). The flat was actually really nice, and really interesting. Very small, filled with tons of small decorations, I remember the paisley tablecloth on the round table. I thought it was very Parisian. The flat itself was originally painter´s studio with a tall, narrow window. Everything during my two days stay at Paris was nice, but the night experience is the thing I remember the most.

January, here we go...

A lamp/candle holder I got from my dear friend Jana. Looks beautiful with more candles and fits well in our old house.
Baby Andulína, almost crawling... . Her teeth are growing now, which brings a lot of discomfort to all of us (sleepless nights and a lot of crying).
We went to a ball that we go to every year. This year the theme was "Wild wild west" and it was great, again. I made a circle striped scarf for an anonymous winner at the ball. I thought I´m able to make it by myself, but I kind of couldn´t wrap my head around what to sew first and how to construct this primitive thing. In the end I had to find a tutorial for this scarf. It was very easy then.
I wore the black dress I made; this is my favourite dress for so many occasions! I love to wear it, it´s fancy but still very comfortable.

painting again

For a long time it was impossible to paint for me, because we were so ill... but now I´m back! The first completed painting of 2013 is Marie in the wood (it´s our favourite place in a nearby wood, we love the beech trees there). I´m really happy I painted her in her beloved pink dress :).
I´m kind of sad I don´t sew... It´s really not easy for me, because we both (me and my husband) don´t like the loud sound of sewing machine in the evening, when the children finally get to bed. And Marie sleeps right next to our living room, where I used to sew. Also I kind of regret buying the overlock, but maybe some day I´ll get to use it? I hope to sew during the day, when Andulka grows up a bit.

happy new year

Happy new year to everyone! I can´t believe it´s 2013 already... so much happened in last year - and so many good things happened to me :).

christmas photos

 Our christmas day was fine, but a little bit sad this year. I was so much looking forward to christmas this year (wait, last year!), but in the end it all went wrong. Marie was very ill, and in the evening she had a fever. She fell asleep during the dinner and we had to open our presents without her... Luckily she was able to open at least her presents in the end (she was crying a lot during the evening). When she got a bit better, me and Andulka became also ill. Andulka had also fevers and it was quite a nightmare... crying all night, we were unable to keep her temperature down. Oh well.
I love our christmas tree. I love our ornaments, mostly hand made. It´s such a beautiful decoration for the living room. I know the tree iteslf is not a perfect one, but decorated it looks perfect to me.