VamosiArt Gallery

Emil Mlynarcik

Biography

I spent my childhood in a small village in the middle of the mountains of Slovakia. I was surrounded by folk arts as was singing, dance and folk crafts. As I remember, I found landscape paintings in the local library, where I received a book full of reproductions of Russian painters of 18.-19. century. Ivan Šiškin`s paintings accompanied me throughout my youth and they formed my approach to nature.

I never wanted voluntarily to become an artist. True, I liked painting but never had ambitions to become successful in the art world. In university, I studied meteorology, which is another way of nature exploration. But I was not very satisfied with that. More and more often I returned to painting. Until I realized that painting gives to my life, to say so, greater meaning. Its 30 years by now, since when I'm making paintings, exclusively.

The main motif of my art practice was, and still is, nature. Sometimes I also depict rural motifs, necessarily, with a portion of nostalgy. In the '90s of the previous century I have also painted vedutas of old Wien, but I knew it wouldn’t be my path.

Since I lack academic education in arts, my approach wasn't directly influenced by a figure of any teacher, and I never tried to subordinate myself to none of the contemporary tendencies. Throughout time, I am just trying to master my skills in a realistic depiction of motifs. I'm subordinating everything to that: used medium, style, even surface. I work with linen canvas on a wooden frame with gesso, and I am using exclusively oil colors, because they dry slowly, which helps me to work more on details. Even when I'm using underpainting, the final painting is more „Alla prima“ like. I don't use a layered stain technique.

I see myself as a painter rather than an artist in a strong sense, but, far from this play of words, I'm just trying to paint nature for the joy, for myself and for those, who are sensitive to my work.