Chemistry 3 with Květa Stejskalová and Štěpán Brož

 

The year has come full circle, and I am once again preparing for my traditional workshop at the cultural centre Schule in Šediviny in the Orlické Mountains, where I return each year with a chemistry-based program with an artistic dimension. This year’s theme is Chemist as Painter or Painter as Chemist? We will be painting with colours that we prepare ourselves using chemical processes inspired by painters of the distant past. Over the past few days, my laboratory has once again been transforming into a kind of alchemical den: a pot of beetroot is simmering pleasantly (though not for everyone), oak galls are bubbling away in a beaker among green tea leaves (from Sadská, thanks to Jan Vácha), and in the drying oven, water is slowly evaporating from clusters of blue precipitates… Making pigments is quite a challenge—many of the colours historically used by painters were based on salts of heavy metals (Pb, Cd, Hg), which I obviously cannot bring into a public setting. But we’ve managed—there will be colours and whites, this time without toxic risk. The painting part of the workshop will be led by the exhibiting artist Štěpán Brož.