Helena Stockar
About the Artist
"My art is my passion, my life's work, not my hobby"
Helena's life story
Helena M. Stockar draws on her Czech roots to create abstractions that explore the emotional depths of all facets of life and living. She gathers inspiration from her turbulent past as an émigrée from the Czechoslovakia on the wings of early life under the shadows of WWII and Communism and New World beginnings starting in 1960s New England. Her art and her life story weave together into a tapestry of struggle, victory, joy and sorrow highlighted by events that seem to defy the impossible and define the essential...
"Rich color and strongly shaped personalities"
Helena's life story
Helena makes use of “lavear”, a coloring technique, originally used in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, which gives her work a translucent quality. This is especially evident in her watercolors and dramatic abstract oils. Much of her art concentrates on deep human emotions and interactions. Her figures are often caught in tragic-comic relationships or engaged in dialogue. They are strong individuals – some content, some lonely, some triumphant and some desperate, others cast in the role of on-lookers, helpless bystanders and innocent victims...
Through the Years
Early Years
1933 - 1968
Helena was born in what would become Czechoslovakia in 1933, spending the war years in Prague. By 1948, the country was under Communist rule. Helena studied at the Prague School of Graphic Art and Design from 1948-1952 and then piano at the Prague Conservatory of Music. She married Ivo in 1959, and by 1963 they had two children. In the late 1960s, Czechoslovakia was experiencing a partial return to democracy. It was in this Prague Spring that Ivo, intending a better life in the West for the family, fled to America. The reality of partial democracy, however, meant that Helena and the children were detained in their attempt to follow him. Eventually, in 1968, Helena and the children were successful and in July, on Ivo’s birthday, landed in NY City. A month later, on 21st August, the borders were once again closed when Russian troops invaded the country with half a million Warsaw Pact troops and tanks.
New Beginnings
1968 - 1981
The family settled in Rhode Island to start their new life. Speaking only Czech when leaving Prague, Helena and the children were transported from a capital city to a sleepy suburb. While life still had its challenges – learning a new language and a new way of living - they were hugely grateful to be safe and together. News from home was both heart-braking and deeply worrying. Protests and civilian-based resistance to the invasion lasted eight months. Eventually, troop subdued the country and all former reforms were reversed. Worry for remaining family members and the guilt of being free were a constant reminder of how narrowly they had escaped. But, as always happens, life settled into a form of normal. Life was frugal but there was always laughter and love. In this time, Helena’s art was crowded with faces, people rising above adversity, life in all its splendour and frailty, the scenes always in a rainbow of colour and executed with unwavering lines.
Empty Nesters
1982 - 2000
Once the children spread their wings and left home, Helena had more time to devote to her art and this turned out to be the most prolific time for her as an artist. Thoughts of her beginnings, the world she left behind and the scars of her past experiences haunted Helena but also were the source of inspiration and an outlet to explore her thoughts and feelings. The changes happening in Eastern Europe culminating with the tearing down of the Berlin Wall and the Velvet Revolution in the Czechoslovakia signalled hope and new beginnings for Helena’s homeland. Motherhood became a recurring theme in her work as she experienced it more as an external party, having become a grandmother. She and Ivo also built their dream home in South County which included a large studio. There was no stopping her now. With Ivo’s help, Helena had about 40 exhibitions in California, New York, Massachusetts, and her beloved Rhode Island.
Embracing the Years
2001 - 2013
Another new chapter began with the realisation that safety is never guaranteed. September 11th 2001 had a profound effect on Helena’s art. Having very nearly been at the epicentre – Helena and Ivo were that day travelling to NYC and had intended to leave the car in the Twin Towers – was itself disturbing, but witnessing the pain and suffering of that day left its mark on Helena. And, as always happened with Helena’s intense experiences, she explored and ‘worked through’ them through her art, producing some of her finest works. Sadly, towards the end of this period, age and health issues were starting to catch up with her. Helena and Ivo made a final move together from the home in RI that they built and lived in for almost a quarter of a century to PA to be closer to family. Her art style over this final stage of Helena’s life shifted even more to abstract and reverted to featuring more landscapes. She painted until her last breath, completing her last paintings only days before she died 12 November 2013.