Interview with Jiří Vidlák

Fine artist from Brno, Jiří Vidlák, who has been granted this year's GALLERY AWARD and with it also the opportunity to present and offer his works of art in an established Slovak online gallery belonging to the gallerist Viera Žáková https://www.atelierhlavina.sk provided us with this interesting interview.

• What was your journey to art like?

Short. Drawing used to be my main hobby since my childhood. Drawing stories most of all. Maybe all the kids are like that, but those more reasonable ones in later years move towards something more useful for them. To things such as sports, dancing or cigarettes. I got stuck with drawing.

• How do you perceive naive art? How different is it in your view?

I do not want to disappoint anyone, but I am not entirely sure, if naïve art still exists in the modern society. Naïve art, as I understand it, should be based on innocence. It was created by people who had no access to libraries and the internet. And thus, to detailed instructions to how and using what people create pieces of art. Not mentioning all kinds of shortcuts using modern technology.

Anyway, what we generally call naïve art I see as one of many contemporary creative languages, which follows not the 20th century art, but rather much older art forms. Middle Ages, or even antiquity. Any piece of art by Pieter Brueghel or Hieronymus Bosch would be taken for a naïve painting today, wouldn´t it?

• Where do you draw your inspiration from? What subjects do you like most?

Inspiration is all around us. I like old towns as well as cultural landscape containing little fields and woodlands. But all my pictures relate to people and their activities. They are doing everyday things in a strange way or something completely nonsensical as if it was completely ordinary.

• Do you have advice for those who would like to try painting?

  Not really. I have never been much into taking advice from the more experienced myself. And what is more important, fine art is not bound by anything or anyone, nor it is controlled anymore. In our country at least. So – if you like painting, do it. If not, do not bother…

Thank you for the interview.

Photo: NAIVA BRATISLAVA & Matej Bezák