How I Found My Dream And Made It Reality. Disclosure Of My Early Art.

Today I will tell you the truth of how my dream became reality. And I will show you something that I don't show much- my paintings from early years.

I started painting in 2004, in Paris. I was 25, in my second year of university studies and after 5 years of intense school of Life that I'll talk about some other time.

It was a rare kind of night. I wasn't in one of my two jobs (I worked full time as night receptionist/security at a hotel in front of Notre Dame Cathedral and part time as security in all sorts of gigs that I could get). During the day I studied Masters program of sports and training at Universite Paris-Sud. During the night I worked, mostly. Yes it was an intense year, I did not get to sleep much, except on school desk during lectures of biochemistry.
Yet that one night when I was off, I was considering what to do, instead of just relaxing. All of a sudden voice talked in my head: “Go and buy oil paints”. Out of the blue. And that's exactly what I did. I jumped in my car, drove to nearest hypermarket complex and bought set of oil paints. I didn't know how to use them, I never painted oil before. I didn't even know that I can't paint oil on ordinary paper or that I need a medium to dilute them. But I spent that night painting anyways, locked up in my tiny room in University residence.

That night and voice from above changed my life forever. I never stopped painting ever since. I used most of my spare time painting. I self taught myself my skill by relentless trials and errors....and by patience and determination that I could only get from the fact that I loved doing it (in anything else I used to be impatient and intolerant). Six months later I sold my first painting. I think I got like 50 euros for it. It felt like a lottery winner. That person actually loved my art enough to offer me money for it?

Year later, I am living in Prague, working in finance, painting every weekend and most evenings. I meet Pavel online, on a website where amateur artists share their work, and pretend like we know the shit inside out. Pavel was an older gentleman and a proficient painter. One day he invites me to join him for an plein air (outside) painting session. I was nervous. It was totally different than studio work. So unforgiving. Light changing so fast, landscape so real and all around me. How to translate this magnificence on the tiny canvas in front of me in 2 hours? How to make something three dimensional on something flat and still give the impression of space? But I learned. Pavel was a great teacher and I wasn't half bad student. I soaked it all in like a sponge. Soon enough, I was going on my own. I would throw my field easel over my shoulder and I'd go to all sorts of places around Prague. Especially to places which had some kind of magic and not many people around.

I spent couple years like that, combining both plein air and studio work, and it made me grow as an artist. I eventually met professors from Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, and took a week long plein air course with them. That first course propelled me on my path of an emerging artist. I still had no idea that I will eventually become a pro, but regular sales and commissions left me with no choice but to glimpse that possibility somewhere in future.

Seems like whole life of travels, adventures, mistakes, troubles, heartbreaks, and couple of rebirths to new versions of Jan Kasparec had to happen before I finally did become full time artist. But how it happened was not like anything I planned. I was fired from my job, miserable, insecure, emotionally and financially unstable, in a country where my residential status was not even granted yet. Yet that was the moment when I said: fuck it, I'll give it all I have. And that's exactly what I did.

If I would like you to take one thing with you from my story, it is this: you will not live your dream on that day when everything finally falls in place, so you can just smoothly transition from the job that you say to everyone you love but deep in your heart you know it sucks and it's not what you came here to do on this planet, counting hours to every weekend and days to every vacation. In that beautiful worry-free, secure and prepared set up, where all you need to do is just show up your fancy self in your fluffy little studio and produce amazing art. No.

Unless your last name is Hilton and your first name is for some reason that of the city where I started painting, it will be painful. It will be hard. It will require much more than 9-5 rat race. It will break you down hundred times and make you doubt yourself twice as many times. It will make you sacrifice your social life, most of your friends, your money, maybe even your lover or girlfriend. There will be times when you'll scream at it and hate it. There will be times when you won't have the slightest idea how you'll survive. But if you face all that and still get up in the morning with itch to do that one thing you came here for, for love, for grace, for truth, for whatever god damn reason which springs from the depth of your heart, then you will succeed.
Universe loves the brave ones. The resilient ones. The ones who do things first and think later, because they can't lie to themselves anymore. And that quality is also in you my friend, see it or not.

I wish all of you to taste what it feels like when you step on your true path. Eventually we all will. Such is the human destiny.

Save yourself some time today. Save some time to God. Just go and bloody do it!

With Love,
Jan

P.S.: All the featured paintings are plein air (painted outside in one session). Most of them are sold, but this last one, I will never sell. My mother used to sit in that chair, inviting me to have a tea with her, in the garden where I played with my 3 brothers. It's been 6 years since she's gone, but I still see her smile clearly, like she never left this world.