Sylva Novotná offers a spiritual culture genre. It’s an artistic person with a wide, even perpetual education. After grammar school in Uherské Hradiště the South Moravian studied arts and history of arts at Palacký University Olomouc. After that she worked as an assistant at Faculty of Fine arts at Brno University of Technology. She lives in Olomouc now.
At the age of 33 she left a freelance output and started to engage in icon painting by which she was attracted during visiting Oxford and Essex and notably by studying orthodox Russian culture. The most intensive stimulants were temples (cerkve - small wooden churches) and monasteries on Valaam and Solovetsky Islands that are known mostly as a literal model for Russian dissenter Solženicyn. She completed a research fellowship in school of icon painting at spiritual academy in Trinity-Sergiev Lavra and a short term attachment aimed at fresco technique in Optina Pustyň monastery.
Naturally as every professional she continues education, nowadays she puts the accent on iconography. Very important for her was a contact with a group of people around The Institute of Saint John the Theologian for Eastern Christian Studies.
She uses tratidional procedure and materials in painting technique, such as natural pigments like mineral dust, alder wood, chalk, rabbit glue, eggs and pure gold, but also supportive materials as garlic, beer and bread. The work is very delicate and lengthy, but offers a touch of orthodox tradition connecting generations of mostly anonymous icon painters. This technique allows feeling the liturgical heart of icon.
"I appreciate discovering the world of icon and visual reality in that the things are seen from "different" view, where I feel well. I first approach icons intuitively, with sense, but I find wonderfully fascinating also other layers of meaning, symbolism and image of theological thinking. The sinking into the picture is always the primary goal, verifying the pureness – liveliness, question and answer. The icon attracts me with it’s multiple meaning, it’s able to radiate peace, but also sparkle with dynamic energy, it’s possible to talk and be quiet together. It interests me as a picture, as an artwork which I watch growing up under my hands. The actual icon which I use as an inspiration allows me to meet inwardly those who touched it a long time ago and also those who are imaged on that icon. It’s a great adventure to investigate what ways were used to reach the impression. You find out very often that at place where you looked for a loosely drawn line is a slow, soft and long-built touch full of concentration. With that the work on icon becomes a never ending discovering different kinds of secrets in that historical and existecial becomes the same."