I was born in 1970 in the former socialist Czechoslovakia, two years after the Russian tanks put an end to a slowly improving life for millions of Czechs and Slovaks. The idea of reformed socialism, a new regime "with a human face" was quickly put to sleep and a dull grayness covered the land. An ice age came again.

There was no unemployment, medicare and schooling were free to everybody and the cost of living was low. There was no freedom either, but for many years I didn't notice.

My first memory of myself as an artist in the true sense of the word is when I am about five years old. I am taken to a psychologist to get evaluated to see if I could start elementary school a year earlier than usual. I am asked to draw any picture I want. The psychologist is watching me closely and I make sure my drawing is very clear. Finally, I hold the drawing up for her. It is a boy pissing in the grass.

"Why did you draw a peeing boy?" she asks.

I look at her. What a silly question to ask. "Because he really needed to go. It couldn't wait."

I passed the test and it must have been because of my drawing skills... I was immediately enrolled in the after-school art program. Most of our art topics revolved around how we imagined life in the Soviet Union and events from the relatively short communist history. I remember winning one painting competition where I painted people walking in the park on Sunday afternoon. The teacher creatively renamed it "Picking tea in Gruzia."

My high-school years were spent at a boarding school for talented kids, studying the restoration of old paintings. The art school was run by a socialist bureaucrat, but all of the art subjects were taught by established contemporary artists. The training was strictly academic, there was no room for imagination. We were true apprentices with possible potential but assumed to know nothing.

The idea of climbing scaffoldings in old churches and palaces across Europe to restore old masterpieces was mesmerizing. I believed I had all it took: talent, patience, endurance, and all the right instincts. All but a suitable background. The socialist regime was not very supportive of providing higher education to the children of the intelligentsia. And definitely not for those who were not members of the Communist party. I decided to try anyway. The world was mine to take. A year before my attempting to pass the weeklong exams to enter the Art Academy, I started taking private art lessons at Mr. Hegyesi's studio. He was (and still is) a well-established Slovak painter. I learned more about art working with him in that one year than during my entire previous training. He made me the artist I am today, teaching me not to believe my eyes, since drawing is cheating. It is transferring our three-dimensional world onto two-dimensional paper. He would drown me with detailed studies of things, people, landscapes, until he felt I had mastered the basics. Only then could I get creative and try to develop my own style.

Needless to say, I was not accepted at the Academy and my whole world collapsed. There would never be any scaffoldings for me to climb. What else was there? The only university that would accept me was the Technical University of Kosice, where a department of industrial design had just been opened. I didn't have much desire to study design, but it was a better option than becoming a window washer. After six years of studying mechanical engineering and art, I was ready to face the world. In the meantime the Velvet Revolution had happened, then Czechoslovakia split into two countries, the world was chaos and nobody really needed designers. So I took up graphic design - it was my natural inclination anyway. I worked as a freelancer for various companies in Slovakia and Switzerland, finally moving to the U.S. where I continue my freelance work, learning more every day. As the great art critic Gombrich said: "One never finishes learning about art. There are always new things to discover."

I am pleased to welcome you to my world of art.