For Klára Stodolová, dance and watercolour painting represent a unique way of consciously immersing herself into the present moment, and this approach is a common thread running through all her work and her intense experience of and immediate relationship with reality. In Klára’s work, the watercolour – a technique that requires extraordinary sensitivity, talent and experience, but also alacrity, openness and the ability to
respond to the unexpected – is inextricably linked to her experience of nature. Nature presents her with themes, situations and events that she, ever the focused observer, accepts as a challenge to engage in work, to improvise and experiment. As she passes through the landscape, the landscape it moves within her. She captures the changing weather, refuses to be limited by the conditions and paints not only with a brush, but basically with anything that nature offers. A vitally important element for her is water, which she invites into the creative process as a guide, partner and opposing player, letting it freeze and drip in her paintings and exploring its potential as a vital medium capable of responding to our thoughts and emotions. Movement is not just a fundamental need and an integral component of Klára’s paintings; it also requires a space for expression, which for the past eight years Klára has found in Biodanza, an integrative system of movement created by the Chilean psychologist and lover or life Rolando Toro (1924–2010).

The main idea behind Biodanza is to share the experience of dance and music in a group and to gradually discover and integrate one’s natural character that will encourage health, openness, love and trust within the community of dancers and in one’s entire approach to life. “The depths of the unconscious hide much, all of human and personal experience, cosmic laws, fears and talents. To turn their healthy potential into dance is to bring them to the light of conscious mind in an embodied way,” says painter-dancer Klára. The Biodanza course culminates in a graduation work that builds on the theoretical training and practical experience of the course’s lecturerfacilitator. In Klára’s graduation work, both her passions – dance and painting – intersect in a unique way. She decided
to reflect on her studies and her personal experiences by creating a series of largeformat dance-inspired watercolours capturing Biodanza’s Theoretical Model as well as elements and archetypes of human experience shared across continents and generations. Stodolová exhibits paintings that are not illustrations but an apposite personal expression of the basic principles of Toro’s system, alongside plein-air watercolours.

Klára Stodolová (1977) is a graduate of AVU (1996–2002), where she studied graphics under Jiří Lindovský and Vladimír Kokolia and conceptual art under Miloš Šejn. Besides her painting activities, she also teaches private watercolor courses and last year published the book Akvarel Vy-Hra-Zen, which introduces the waterolour technique through play and games. She has eight years experience in dance and is a student of Biodanza, which she also teaches at Prague’s Dobeška community centre.