Klara Glosova was born in Brno, Czech Republic to a family of architects. In her early twenties, she moved to New York City where she attended Hunter College and the New York Studio School of Drawing, Painting and Sculpture.

Drawing inspiration from her dreams as well as daily life, her paintings are autobiographical and introspective in nature. With a sense of curiosity and playfulness that extends to both concepts and materials, she intertwines her personal history with current existential themes of failing societal and biological structures.

Klara founded NEPO House, an experimental project space in Seattle, WA, where she lives and works. She received Seattle Magazine's Spotlight Award and New Foundation Fellowship. In 2015, she was nominated for the Stranger Genius Award, received a 4Culture Artist Grant in 2018, and was a Betty Bowen finalist in 2014, 2017, and 2022. Most recently, she has exhibited her work in Seattle and Los Angeles with the Koplin Del Rio Gallery, which currently represents her work.

I don't fully understand the motivation behind my work until the work is done. I made a painting recently which includes a row of socialist blocks of flats in the background and a wolf walking in the foreground. It reminded me of the time when I was a kid growing up in the former Czechoslovakia. I used to have a very strong urge to laugh in situations where laughing is totally inappropriate. To prevent myself from making a scene in these moments, I conjured up the darkest, scariest image I could imagine. In order to remember it I made a little rhyme, so I could repeat it like a mantra and recall the image when needed. The rhyme went like this: “Black forest, wolf went in.” That's it, that was the scariest thing I could think of, and it worked most of the time. The recent painting was based on a photo from the current war zone in Ukraine. In its original context it had nothing to do with preventing unwanted laughter in public, but now that element is clearly a part of my painting. I assume that viewers, when/if they connect with my artwork, do the same with their own stories. The painting, like the landscape itself, becomes a wordless witness. I think one way a picture can speak is through heightened tension and a sense of foreboding. Foreboding implies a connection to the future and anticipation of events to come, while the painting itself is a record of an act that happened in the past. I’m interested in this relationship between the past and future.

For a good part of the last year, I was obsessed with the public bathroom at Jefferson Park. Situated prominently in the middle of an expansive, elevated grass plateau, a view of this structure is unavoidable for anyone walking in the park. A small cinder block house with the curb appeal of an American truck stop, it is bland at best and very ugly at worst. I observed this structure, in its mundane utility, throughout the seasons and in all kinds of weather. I watched the long beams of the setting winter sun hit its humble walls and transform it into a place where people come and go, crossing paths and creating stories by passing through this mysterious meeting point, which has assumed an almost mystical presence in my mind. Making a painting about it was a challenge. Still, somehow, this public bathroom lent itself fully to all sorts of projections, from the ever-changing atmospheric light effects to the wanderings of my imagination. Most importantly, it was able to absorb my vacillating feelings. I’m still parsing through all the meanings, but one possible insight is that the world is a reflection of who we are. Clearly, it was I who brought all my “stuff" to this random cinder block house. Now that the painting is done, the Jefferson Park bathroom is just an ordinary public bathroom that I can walk around in peace.

No situation in life is just about one thing or one point of view. Our perceived reality is a confluence of multiple strands of knowledge, feelings, information, personal experience, and real-world events that create the unique, messy things called lives. The same is true for artwork. This messiness, complexity, and ambiguity is precisely what people relate to. It’s one of the reasons art has been the vehicle for human connection from our primordial start. I think conflating political activism with art-making is counterproductive. For the maker, there is a danger of sliding directly into ideological illustration, and for the society, framing art as activism results in robbing the artwork of its inherent complexity. It is an understandable but misplaced notion that we have to simplify and label complex ideas for the public to understand.

Art images courtesy of the artist and Koplin Del Rio Gallery