The basic impulses of Jana Zatvarnicka' s work are the themes of absolute and metaphysics. The element which is crucial for her work is that she is often inspired physically (at the concrete place) by the sacral places, not only the Christian ones but also many other Slavic-pagan spiritual and mystical places or graveyards. Jana also has an interest in other cultures, more specifically the Indian or Aztec ones. In this field she shows her sensibility towards the genius of place and towards feelings of history. This is a precondition for a great selective intuition of any other situation, feeling or impulse to create.

Eventually, she manifests her intuition by indirect studies of books that are based on the touch with the object-book she is studying at the moment. Therefore a very logical medium for her is the medium of painting where Jana is ,,reading" by a direct touch - which seems to transcend her and the picture in front of her (mostly her self-portrait), and what is behind/on the picture stands out. Subsequently, everything what is displayed, she immerses by repainting with other layers and she searches further and backwards - thus, the point is about ,,realizing" of Heidegger's crack in our own ,,thinking" - in this limited existence.

Martin Vongrej