This is my 7th year as a pro artist. 7 year cycles are an important pattern in nature and life, so I'm wondering how is this epic period of my life going to conclude. And also how is the next life cycle going to begin.

This painting is over 2m long (90 inches), my first serious commission I ever got, this was year 2010 and I still lived in Prague!

Naturally, I've been painting for much longer than 7 years. You don't become full time artist overnight. It took me about 5 years of serious painting practice before I decided (or better said before Universe decided for me) that another office job is not an option for me. Altogether it's been around 13 years that I picked up a brush and bought my first set of oil paints. What a ride it has been!

It takes years, even decades, before you develop your own style, your own signature as an artist. That doesn't mean that you won't change styles. You should! Otherwise you're not exploring art as a living thing, but got stuck in a stereotype just because you mastered one particular theme. And that I find boring, borderline sad (waste of time? :)

What is style anyways? In my humble opinion and in my world having a style means that you channeled something that resonates with your being at that particular moment and you don't look left of right to see what others paint. You just deliver what pops in your imaginative self and play with it for a while (months/years) and try to master this particular "message" from the Creator.

Second of a kind, also a commission, for different client though, still 2010

Having a style means that the art carries your particular signature. It means that if someone who has seen your art before, he/she can recognize your art even if she/he has not seen that particular painting before. It just takes a moment for the art lover to look and think: Hey, this is Jan's painting! Totally his style!
If you ever saw Dali's painting you know exactly what I'm talking about. You don't have to see all his liquid clocks or giraffe-legged elephants to recognize his painting.

2012, already living in Canada, painting "New Dawn". As you can tell, my style already changed a bit.

I changed my style numerous times over last 13 years. Today I'd like to share with you the period of my career when I was channeling geometric shapes of all sorts. It came to my mind to share this series of paintings for a specific reason.
One of the last paintings I painted in that style was "Primary Snail", which I was very lucky to recover from the previous owner a month ago. He bought it for his girlfriend at the time (she loved it) but then she betrayed him with another guy so he had bad memories each time he looked at it. So he changed it for a small plein-air painting he fell in love with.

Primary Snail. Oil on canvas, 55 inches long. Happy to have it back!

Now I feel like a jackpot winner! Why? Because in 2012 my client (buddy of mine) paid $600 for it and now the price is $8000. That's what happens when you work your ass off every single day and make it as an artist:) I will actually hold onto this one, not selling bellow 10k. It's a rare gem from a period of my career that I don't have any more paintings left, they all sold.

There's a Czech saying that goes well with this: Kill two flies with one blow. Meaning that it made two people happy: he got a new painting he loved and I got a precious painting back of much larger format than the one I gave him in return. Win win situation.

I hope you enjoyed my geometrical paintings back from 2010-12!

Thank you for reading, commenting and upvoting!

Happy New Day! :)

Jan
follow @jankasparec

Follow Your Heart!