Czech artist brushes up on Kiwi lingo in Woodville

Jana Hylmarova at her temporary home and studio on the outskirts of Woodville as the town's artist-in-residence. Photo / Christine McKay

Learning the quirks of "speaking Kiwi" is one of the challenges Jana Hylmarova, from the Czech Republic, is coming to terms with during her time in Woodville as the Lindauer artist-in-residence.

"Your English is different from the English I have been taught," she said.

During her 10-week stay Jana is keen to explore the landscape before putting her brush to canvas and producing artworks for her portfolio and the Tararua Lindauer art exhibition in March.

"I want to try landscape and portrait painting combined with embroidery, using acrylics," she said. "Pilsen University wants me to achieve some good work. At university we do work, even without inspiration, but here in Woodville it's going to be different, there will be no teacher standing behind my back."

But there is plenty of inspiration.

"I've seen some of the countryside and I'm already starting to work on my projects," Jana said. "The landscape is always changing here. One moment the land is flat, then suddenly there are hills, rising up. We have no bush in Czech, just forest, so the bush is leaving a big impression on me. You have so many paddocks here too."

Jana is in her last year of her masters degree in illustrations at Pilsen University in Prague and applied for the Woodville artist-in-residence because there are few chances to come to New Zealand from the Czech Republic.

"The flight was paid for [thanks to sponsorship from Scanpower], but although I knew Woodville was small, maybe I was expecting it to be even smaller," she said. "It's surprising."

Apart from adjusting to our accent, Jana said there has been little culture shock.

"People here are very direct, that's a good thing and I'm not homesick because there are lots of things happening," she said." I'm used to travelling in Europe. I spent half of last year studying in Portugal and I'd like to explore the world."

As an illustrator Jana has worked mainly on books for children, but admitted it was hard work getting them published.

"I've been thinking a lot about my career and as well as teaching art, I'd like to paint and get my work sold," she said.

Jana's parents are engineers, but her grandfather was a painter.

"My parents are very proud I was chosen for this scholarship," she said.