Marketa Sivek grew up in a small town in communist Czechoslovakia, where her father — a teacher who refused Communist Party membership — could not work in the city and took a bus each day to a village school. The family kept its views inside the house. Sivek learned early to be careful of what she said outside of it. She won painting and poetry competitions as a child in an environment where individualism outside government guidelines was not encouraged. She studied at the Faculty of Philosophy at Charles University in Prague, then in 1990 stood in the streets of Prague during the Velvet Revolution, and in 1992 emigrated to the United States without English.
She taught herself the language in part by watching television, settled in the Wicker Park neighborhood of Chicago, and began showing work in the River North gallery district. She is self-taught as a painter — no formal art school — the practice built across more than 30 years of sustained work from her Chicago studio. Her paintings have been featured in Elle Decor, American Art Collector, Fine Art Connoisseur, and Chicago Interiors, and on the Rachael Ray Show. She has donated work to the Gates Foundation for Africa relief and Lawrence Hall Chicago.
The recurring subject is the house — structures that read as both literal shelter and as metaphor for circumstances that can change without warning. She grew up in gray apartment buildings where color was absent and safety was conditional. The houses in her paintings are saturated with color:deep blues, golds, the palette of skies that dominate her canvases . Paint is applied in heavy layers — oil, acrylic, sand, sometimes gold leaf — building surfaces that hold light differently at different angles. The titles are long and declarative: High In The Sky They Crown The Night With Diamond Glow. Where Time Stands Still And Colors Sing. The optimism is earned, not assumed.
As children, we have the ability to look at things with simple and unwavering wonder and joy. My work is an ever-changing ebb and flow of many different interconnected series worked on for over 30 years — from abstract to more representational. It is rooted in a constant curiosity that fuels the mind.
