Living in the Netherlands; born in Czechoslovakia, behind the Iron Curtain, while developing into a free spirit and thinker. My main and most important inspiration was my grandmother. From her, I learned respect for nature and all living things. From her, I learned that every person has the right to their own way of life, faith and development. She was a very compassionate, intelligent woman. With her, I experienced unconditional love. Both my parents are and were free spirits and despite the political curcumstances then, they followed their path with their head high.

When I grew up and was able to stand on my own feet, I mostly experienced a conditional love. And it always amazed me and made me doubt: were other people not capable of love? Were all people living behind a mask? It was a strange and a clear image at the same time. I was on my own and I was getting used to it.

Until some years ago... it changed. Through an unexpected encounter, through a synchronicity, it can happen that we come across someone who shakes us completely, who wakes us up. It was a kind of slumbering existence I was leading. Productive, yet loveless. Not counting the conditional love you get if you meet other people's expectations.

This beautiful encounter had changed my life forever. And for that I am grateful.

About being an artist

I am an abstract, intuitive artist, based in Hoorn, North-Holland. With my paintings I express the innermost intuitive core of myself. I share my infinite love on canvas. I paint without a plan, without a premeditation or an end result in my mind. I just paint when the urge to paint emerges and the feeling of having to create and express myself feels inevitable and urgent. This can be during the early morning or in the late evening or anytime in between. To paint and to really express what I feel or imagine at that precise moment is the only way of painting for me. All other forms do not feel real. With every painting there comes a story of how the painting came to its being. A painting is a living organism, transcending feelings and expressions. Through the paintings I share my energy and if the energy is speaking to you, the painting will find you. That is the real point of art.

Most of my paintings are painted with water mixable oils and almost always finished within one sitting. To paint so that the colors only mix when I want them to, wet on wet (alla prima) while the colors stay separated, or not if I choose to, is a challenge which I like to have. Another signature point of mine is that I don’t have one particular style. Because of the intuitive, immediate creating out of the exact moment, I never know what will appear and although I might have a color pallet in mind, forms and layers emerge on the go.
For every viewer it is different how each painting feels. And that is precisely what I would like to achieve: the viewer feeling the painting, looking at it and immediately feel - not think, not analyze - just feel. Feeling is a forgotten facility of people. As also with my writing, poems and photography, so with paintings I encourage people to remember that they can feel. A true creation arises from the heart.

For the press

Renata Hamsikova is a self-taught artist. She did not study art nor painting and drawing techniques at college, although she has a technical background with a technical degree including technical drawing and shoe design.
When Renata was little, she just started to draw and paint. On the go, as she discovered more and more about herself and during her personal development her painting techniques developed as well. As thought the techniques had to facilitate what Renata wanted to express. It was never the other way around. First there is the need to express a moment, a feeling, an intuitive input and then there comes the need to use certain method to do so.
Renata seeks inspiration in artists such as Leonor Cunnington, Pablo Picasso, Georgia O'Keefe, Graham Boyd and Etel Adnan for their work but more importantly for their way of thinking and being. The attitude to life is for Renata of a greater importance than the techniques and actual paintings, although one can’t be without the other. Painters with independent and free spirit create differently than painters who try to fit in somewhere.

Besides a painter, Renata is a writer and a photographer. In her book The Light in You, with 272 full color pages she has published more than 250 of her poems and photographs. The Dutch art magazine Vind has published an article about her book. Renata is a much requested motivational speaker.

Renata has not participated in any exhibition so far but is planning to have her solo exhibition soon. Her intention is to exhibit her work in autumn 2024.

Except painting my life is also dedicated to helping exceptionally gifted children and adults to be and stay themselves. There’s still far too little of the right attention being paid to the diversity among people. The result is that many highly gifted children are wrongly assessed and end up in the wrong place. All people need skills to live their lives as they want to and to be who they want to be.

It was never the intention that I should change the world all on my own. It’s my intention to help the world change by helping exceptionally gifted people to be themselves. That way, we can have an impact on the whole together and make our planet a better place for everyone.

When I look back on how my life has gone up till now, being able to be my authentic self seems to be a common thread. It’s expressed in my work, in which I always try to be progressive and innovative and it’s expressed in my private life as well as in my writings and art. I want to inspire people to dare to be themselves, to rediscover their inner child and to live according to their authenticity.

The most satisfying experience is being yourself and creating while free from the societal limitations and judgements of others. And I wish everyone to be able to do just that!

If you would like to read more about giftedness visit my second website at www.ieku.nl

The poetry and photography book was born quite spontaneously, it erupted from the innermost corners of my soul. It is a document of my personal development over the past few years. It is a development from a free mind to an even freer mind, to an infinite experience of the world.

How is that possible? By finding yourself, by seeing yourself through the eyes of your beloved, by realizing that you are totally perfect exactly as you have always been. You only have to scrape off the layers of your conditioning, of your beliefs, seeped into your core by the centuries of unconscious habits and opinions of others.

I realized then that the life I was living was not yet quite as free as I thought. The unconscious opinions of others were pressed on me and influenced my behavior and actions. You have to become conscious of it, someone has to nudge you or you have to realize it on your own, mostly through an intense event, like an illness or death of someone you love.

My poems and thoughts are based on love and freedom. It is my voice you hear and it is the voice of the universe as well. You can hear the voice of the universe, of the divine, yourself. When you still your mind, when you use your intelligence as it should be used - for your own sake, to feel yourself, to find yourself and to become yourself. Again.

I met him totally unprepared.
My eagle.
Felt familiar the very first moment.
Felt familiar the second moment.
Has felt familiar ever since.
Saw him while flying on my own route.
Another Eagle? This high? This very high?
Couldn't believe it at first.
As long as I have lived, I assumed that I was the only one, the only eagle flying through this life.
The surprise to see him, another eagle, the same kind, the same spirit, the same class... Not extinct..
This disclosure took my breath away.
I could have never imagined we would be flying together, next to each other.
But we do.
Two souls in love.
Free.

Do you have any questions about my writings, paintings, photographs or the charity? Or would you like to know more about my work with highly gifted children and adults? Or do you have a totally different question or a suggestion? Please, get in touch.

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