Tomaš Jetela: Painting, Perception, & the Limits of Reality

The Czech painter Tomas Jetela constructs unsettling visual worlds where Old Masters meet pop culture, familiar figures acquire unexpected meanings, and painting challenges our understanding of reality. In conversation with IRK Magazine, he reflects on artistic independence, the digital image, and the unpredictable nature of the creative process.

Tomaš Jetela: A Language Beyond Words

IRK Magazine: Tomaš Jetela, what first drew you to painting, and when did you realise it would become your language?

Tomaš Jetela: My path to painting was a gradual realization that something important was taking shape within me. Over time, that feeling developed into a fascination and eventually became a firm decision to become a painter. It also strengthened my conviction about who I was.

Several experiences influenced this journey. During elementary and high school, I read countless biographies and novels about artists, including painters, sculptors, and writers. I was fascinated by the Renaissance masters, the Montmartre painters, and the life of Vincent van Gogh. Beyond the romanticized stories and myths surrounding the bohemian lifestyle, however, I discovered one common trait: these people worked hard, systematically, relentlessly, and without compromise. Their dedication often bordered on obsession.

That realization stayed with me.

For me, painting is a universal language that operates on a different level from ordinary dialogue. It acknowledges certain rules while constantly breaking them. Spoken language, by contrast, is a system designed to communicate and transmit information. Painting behaves more like a volatile force that penetrates the brain without asking permission. It disregards logic, challenges taboos, and refuses to respect conventional boundaries.

Like water, painting adapts to its surroundings while remaining unpredictable. It can assume almost any form, yet it can also destroy the structures that attempt to contain it. That tension is what makes painting such a powerful language.

Tomaš Jetela between Old Masters and Contemporary Culture

IRK Magazine: Your paintings often feature striking figures, mysterious atmospheres, and unexpected combinations of imagery. How would you describe the universe you enter whenever you step into your studio?

Tomas Jetela: I would question the description of my figures as tormented. Some may appear powerful, certainly, but most do not strike me as tormented at all. Among the hundreds or perhaps thousands of figures and portraits I have painted, only a few might fit that description. Generally, I see them as more angelic beings, radiating positivity like crystal-clear water emerging from the depths of the earth.

Nevertheless, I hope that some of my figures, and perhaps entire paintings, possess a certain power. Mystery is essential to art. A painting should leave room for the unspoken, create an atmosphere of something not immediately apparent, and suggest an extraordinary depth beneath the surface.

IRK Magazine: How would you describe the universe you enter whenever you step into your studio?

Tomas Jetela: I would describe my visual universe as a puzzle in which the past and present continually intersect. For example, I might combine references to Old Master paintings, fragments of Baroque still lifes, or landscapes by Claude Lorrain with cartoons, comics, contemporary clothing, and ordinary objects such as paper bags. Occasionally, science fiction introduces an additional dimension.

These elements create unexpected relationships. Once removed from their original contexts, they acquire new meanings and generate unfamiliar interpretations. I particularly enjoy bringing together images that initially seem incompatible or irrational. One element might belong to a distant historical period, while another comes directly from contemporary culture. When they meet, both lose something of their original identity and begin to function differently.

Consequently, the painting becomes a space for questions rather than answers. It challenges viewers to reconsider how context shapes their perception of familiar things.

Ultimately, I want to take motifs that have existed in painting for centuries, sometimes millennia, and make them appear different. The challenge lies in transforming the familiar without losing its ability to resonate.

IRK Magazine: You have worked with painting, drawing, and collage, incorporating fragments from books and magazines into your compositions. How does this combination of materials influence the meaning of your work?

Tomaš Jetela: In the past, I used collage more extensively and systematically, including as a means of developing content. In my current work, fragments from books and magazines appear only occasionally. They serve more as nostalgic details than as essential elements of the composition.

As for their emotional impact, I honestly have no idea how the presence of collage changes a viewer’s experience. In fact, I consider the question largely irrelevant because something is always happening within a painting, whether collage is present or not.

I also dislike the term emotion when people use it to describe painting. It has become vastly overrated in this context. There is a persistent prejudice that painters are sensitive, emotionally unstable individuals who surrender to inspiration. I find that stereotype misleading, and I have similar reservations about the word inspiration itself.

My process is closer to what I would call conscious, analytical irrationality. Analytical thinking establishes the framework, but the decisions that follow are often intuitive. Of course, these elements are not mutually exclusive. Everything that takes place in the mind, including emotions, ideas, and movements of the subconscious, eventually finds its way into the painting.

In that sense, a painting reflects its creator’s personality. The artist’s mind encompasses an entire cosmos, registering the smallest disturbances within the psyche as well as events unfolding in the world beyond it. I sometimes think of it as a highly sensitive seismograph, recording everything that happens both within us and around us.

Tomaš Jetela’s Oil Paintings in the Age of Digital Images

IRK Magazine: We live in a world saturated with digital imagery.

Tomaš Jetela: Digital images present particular versions of human existence, but they do not necessarily represent reality. In the virtual world, people adopt countless masks and identities. They pass before us like misty apparitions at such extraordinary speed that we barely have time to process what we see.

For a figurative painter, this endless stream of strange human appearances offers fascinating material. These images wash over us continuously, almost like a tsunami. If artists are to act as mirrors of their time, they cannot ignore this transformation. Instead, they must confront digital and virtual reality, incorporate it into their work, and find ways to use it to their advantage.

We can compare this moment with the arrival of photography. Photography transformed painting because artists had to reconsider what painting could accomplish in a world where images could be reproduced mechanically. Something similar is happening today with digital imagery, although we are still in the middle of that transformation and may not fully understand its consequences.

IRK Magazine: How do you see the role of oil painting evolving within this increasingly virtual environment?

Tomaš Jetela: Painting retains a distinctive quality: it can slow down our experience of looking. A viewer can pause before a painting and encounter a sense of suspended time, provided the work resonates aesthetically, thematically, emotionally, or existentially.

For that encounter to happen, however, the artwork must connect with the viewer’s own era and experience. I would describe this relationship as an extended presence, emerging from the interaction between the painting and the viewer’s mind, shaped by memories of the past and expectations of the future.

Paradoxically, the digitization of painting, including its circulation through social media and virtual environments, can make art more accessible. It may capture attention, encourage patience, and create opportunities for a slower, more sustained encounter with an image.

The digital world does not necessarily threaten painting. Instead, it challenges painting to discover new ways of becoming relevant.

IRK Magazine: you studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague under Jiří Lindovský and Michael Rittstein. Looking back, how did your education shape the visual language you have developed today?

Tomaš Jetela: Looking back, the Academy helped me understand one fundamental thing: in art, my own decisions, opinions, and judgment are what matter most. I am the beginning and end of my work. I must determine its value for myself rather than surrender that responsibility to the self-appointed authorities of the art world, whether professors, curators, gallerists, or others.

Whenever I create something, I must first acknowledge and legitimize its existence on my own terms. The work needs to satisfy me conceptually, emotionally, or existentially before I can expect anyone else to engage with it.

My paintings often introduce new forms and content that the viewer’s brain may initially struggle to process. They can appear strange, confusing, or unsettling. Yet I see this uncertainty as an adventure in fresh ideas, a landscape of possibilities that have not previously existed in quite the same form.

Who, then, is better positioned to give these ideas their initial legitimacy than the person who brings them into the world?

I have become increasingly skeptical of artistic authorities, whether within educational institutions or elsewhere. Too often, people present trivial opinions as profound wisdom. Over time, I learned to distance myself from influences that restrict independent thought, as well as from values and judgments that serve little purpose.

In the past, I tried to understand painting largely through other people’s explanations. Today, I place far greater trust in my own judgment. For me, artistic independence means accepting responsibility for the work rather than allowing others to dictate what it should become.

Tomaš Jetela on Transformation, Decay, and the Future of Painting

IRK Magazine: Your portraits continue to evolve, and your work moves between figuration and abstraction.

Tomas Jetela: I would not describe my ambitions in terms of exploring new aesthetic territories. Aesthetics, as such, are not particularly important to me.

Instead, I am interested in the essence of painting and the relationship between its different genres: figuration, abstraction, landscape, and still life. I want to investigate growth, transformation, and decay, while examining how these processes interact with the relationship between past and present.

My work exists in a constant state of development. Ideas mature, change direction, and sometimes disappear altogether. I might consider a particular approach essential in the morning, only to abandon it by the evening. The creative process rarely follows a predictable path, and I am continually searching for the most compelling variations and possibilities.

IRK Magazine: What territories are you interested in exploring next?

Tomaš Jetela: At times, the work seems to develop independently of me. My relationship with a painting becomes a matter of responding to its demands: deepening its meaning, changing its conceptual direction, or discovering a possibility that was not visible before.

The process continually opens new spaces and shifts existing boundaries. It resembles a fluid horizon that moves as we approach it. Nothing can ever be grasped completely; there are only intuitions, transformations, and further questions.

Ultimately, I do not believe that painting should simply explain the world. Words tend to simplify reality in an attempt to make it comprehensible. Painting does almost the opposite: it complicates our understanding and reveals how much remains beyond our grasp.

Perhaps that is precisely where its possibilities lie. Rather than offering definitive answers, painting keeps the world open to interpretation.

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About Tomas Jetela

Tomáš Jetela is a Czech painter known for his distinctive visual language that merges abstraction, surrealism, and figuration. His work delves into themes of human existence, identity, and perception, expressed through vibrant colors, dynamic compositions, and emotional intensity.