foto credit : Johana Merta
559 days of constant disobedience
After Claude Monet – The Beach at Sainte Adresse
I was sick. Very sick.
None of the doctors knew what was wrong with me.
They said it was probably post-COVID…
I was bedridden for almost six months.
My husband asked me if I wanted to die.
And if not, that I had to start creating again.
He knows me well, and he was right again. As he almost always is.
Except for the clover, which he didn’t recognize. It was alfalfa.
That was on January 4, 2024, when I couldn’t even lift my arms. I had lost most of my vitality. But his impulse, that question, was a turning point. I remembered the pre-printed canvas in the attic. I bought it years ago in Brno. I had to buy it; I purchase materials regardless of their current use or the family budget. For me, pre-printed embroidery represents a specific discipline of creation and the problem of conditional creativity/obedience. Women’s artistic creation was suppressed, and women’s creativity was honed through skills in the category of home decoration. Fine motor skills and patience were ideally appreciated in combination with quietness. Embroidery is classist. I am the first woman in our family who can study art…
I decided not to fill in the purchased pattern AFTER CLAUDE MONET. It was my answer, my silent resistance. Systematic disobedience to determination. Systematic, inconspicuous resistance to passivity. Some days I was only able to make a few stitches. My daily capacity was limited to peeling one tangerine a day. I continued until I recovered and finished the embroidery on June 16. 2025. I gradually covered the motif completely with Payne’s gray.