A believer in the ephemeral, Jan Valik describes his paintings as fluid territories and thresholds between space and atmosphere, land and memory, painted through sensation, emotion, and immersion in the medium. Turning to the abstraction of nature and deeply rooted between influences of Eastern and Western thought, Jan’s painting, as both process and result, is that threshold.
These are thresholds of subtle elements that shape our experience of the world – light, air, mist, memory, and emotion. They emerge through layered colour, varied materials, and an intuitive process of accumulation – in similar ways as memories and sensations, allowing for new landscapes to be revealed.
And with an universality of human experience in mind while also feeling the urgency and contemporary challenges (and crises) in our relationship with nature, environment, imagination, self and understanding, Jan’s work is quietly but resolutely turning to embrace these nuances towards painting as an open space where layers, marks, and brushwork emerge as an ecosystem of its own, a space of dialogue between the ephemeral and the everlasting.