Elise Wright is an English 
Teaching Assistant. During this academic year, she teaches English at Gymnázium Jakuba Škody in Přerov, a town of 42 thousand, located in the Olomouc Region, in the eastern part of the Czech Republic. With an MA in Liberal arts studies, a goal to become a European history teacher and a life-long passion for running, Elise was placed at a general college-preparatory high school. Throughout the school year, however, Elise has discovered another passion - when traveling across the county, mostly by train, she has developed a habit of sketching the places that she wanted to keep in her mind. When Elise shared some of her sketches at the Fulbright mid-year conference, her fellow grantees were amazed by her talent. Later in the year, Elise hosted a painting workshop at a school of her fellow Fulbrighter Bea Voorhees in Ledeč nad Sázavou. Dozens of students managed to paint a “typical Czech countryside” within a regular 45-minutes long lesson. Their results were quite breathtaking, regardless of their prior painting experience. Elise possesses a unique gift to approximate her everyday experiences in an authentic visual way: "I meditate on the memory of the place. I revisit the castles and cities and mountains when I carve their silhouettes on the page. A bit of the enchantment returns to me then." Take a look at the moments that Elise hopes to keep close to her heart after she returns back home to Asheville, NC during the summer.
I’ve done it. You’ve done it. The sweating herd of tourists below the astronomical clock is most likely doing it right now. I’m talking about the modern, ethical, and environmentally conscious version of trophy hunting—shooting sites rather than animals. Now tell me honestly: how many of those pictures ever see the light of day? A few find their way to Instagram. More rot in the cloud on some distant server farm, as forgotten as the decapitated pronghorns in shuttered trophy rooms.
Seems a bit of a shame.
I’m not talking about those lucky few with Nikon cameras, adobe photoshop subscriptions, and the skill to use both. They are probably still looking through their shots of the Mother City’s skyline. I’m talking about us smartphone-wielding plebs who try again and again to stuff ruined castles and backlit clouds and wildflower fields into our phones’ memory. Most of the time, the results disappoint. The phone strips the castle of its enchantment, the clouds of their delicacy, the flowers of their color.
Memories fade. Photos don’t. But they seem less vivid to me than half-forgotten recollections.
I reaped a bountiful crop of snapshots this year. The Czech Republic is a fertile hunting ground for amazing scenes. I captured snapshots from the top of Sněžka to the opening of the world’s deepest pit cave, and everywhere in between. I simply could not allow all these photos—the mementos of my adventures here as an ETA—slip unseen into the digital ether.
Deleting all your high school photos on accident will do that to you.
So, I did the most logical thing I could. I put down my phone and began skewering the ephemeral on the end of a pencil.
I am a dilettante, not an artist. (Peak in an old master’s gallery if you must see true artistry. Or go down to Moravský Krumlov. You will be amazed.) I mostly daydreamed through my high school art lessons. But color theory has proven more memorable than derivatives, and two-point perspective more useful than integrals, in my line of work.
I started with pencil, having left my acrylics back in the states. But after hiking the Hostýnský Vrch and the Jeseníky mountains when autumn burned the forest, this colorless medium lost its charm. I purchased watercolors and later acrylics, and gradually forgot my earlier dalliance with the graphite. Also, the equestrian statue of Franz Joseph outside the Habsburg Palace continually parries the clumsy stabs of my pencil. I have mostly conceded defeat.
To speak plainly, I draw and I paint landscapes from my photographs. Here is my process:
1. Say yes to every adventure. (And reschedule the ones I accidentally plan for the same day.)
2. Take a hundred photos. Buy more icloud storage space. Repeat.
Seems a bit of a shame.
I’m not talking about those lucky few with Nikon cameras, adobe photoshop subscriptions, and the skill to use both. They are probably still looking through their shots of the Mother City’s skyline. I’m talking about us smartphone-wielding plebs who try again and again to stuff ruined castles and backlit clouds and wildflower fields into our phones’ memory. Most of the time, the results disappoint. The phone strips the castle of its enchantment, the clouds of their delicacy, the flowers of their color.
Memories fade. Photos don’t. But they seem less vivid to me than half-forgotten recollections.
I reaped a bountiful crop of snapshots this year. The Czech Republic is a fertile hunting ground for amazing scenes. I captured snapshots from the top of Sněžka to the opening of the world’s deepest pit cave, and everywhere in between. I simply could not allow all these photos—the mementos of my adventures here as an ETA—slip unseen into the digital ether.
Deleting all your high school photos on accident will do that to you.
So, I did the most logical thing I could. I put down my phone and began skewering the ephemeral on the end of a pencil.
I am a dilettante, not an artist. (Peak in an old master’s gallery if you must see true artistry. Or go down to Moravský Krumlov. You will be amazed.) I mostly daydreamed through my high school art lessons. But color theory has proven more memorable than derivatives, and two-point perspective more useful than integrals, in my line of work.
I started with pencil, having left my acrylics back in the states. But after hiking the Hostýnský Vrch and the Jeseníky mountains when autumn burned the forest, this colorless medium lost its charm. I purchased watercolors and later acrylics, and gradually forgot my earlier dalliance with the graphite. Also, the equestrian statue of Franz Joseph outside the Habsburg Palace continually parries the clumsy stabs of my pencil. I have mostly conceded defeat.
To speak plainly, I draw and I paint landscapes from my photographs. Here is my process:
1. Say yes to every adventure. (And reschedule the ones I accidentally plan for the same day.)
2. Take a hundred photos. Buy more icloud storage space. Repeat.
3. Spend far too long rifling through my camera role, flicking through my memories like a deck of cards, until I find that lucky shot that hits home—a picture that caught a hint of enchantment.
4. Tape paper down to my kitchen table, or crack open the sketchbook in the train, press play for Dvořák’s Cypresses, and hope for the best.
5. Stop when I can only make the picture worse.
It’s not an exact science.
My paintings and drawings don’t put the enchantment back into the scene. I’m not vain enough to make that claim. But when I look, really look at the fragment I caught in the camera, and I do my best to recreate it, I meditate on the memory of the place. I revisit the castles and cities and mountains when I carve their silhouettes on the page. A bit of the enchantment returns to me then.
When I go hunting for pictures, I see the world differently. Any old path or tree or building could be a masterpiece in the making. In the winter, when the darkness dwarfed the daylight, I realized that I could even see the beauty in the twilight geometry of the block housing. I had written these apartments off as eyesores and blights on the Czech townscape, until I considered them through a painter’s lens. It is a conscious decision to look at the world this way (for me at least. Other people may be blessed enough to see the whole waking world as a potential gallery). You can find a metaphor in that, if you feel inclined to look into it.
I don’t draw people. At least, not in detail. A small figure gives a sense of scale, and I need to communicate the enormity of Ardšpach somehow. I could invent some metaphor to explain away my lack of people. I could say something about how we as people forget how small we are in the grand scheme of things. Or that our small role changes the scene. It wouldn’t be false. It also wouldn’t be true. In all honesty, people are beyond my talents. Like Franz Joseph.
However, people are an indispensable component of every piece of art I’m really proud of. Each picture is a memory of an adventure that I shared with someone else: my students, my mentor, my fellow teachers, my fellow Fulbrighters, or my friends that I have made in the past few months. It gives me so much joy to share a painting months later and relive the adventure with the people who shared it.
I have a hard time parting with them.
A knack for drawing comes in handy sometimes. My pictures have helped me repay my debts. Specifically, my Christmas cookie debt; I don’t have the space here to adequately praise the generosity and baking skills of the Gymnazium Jakuba Škody English department. A painting is not an equal trade for a box of perníčky and linecké, but we all must play the hand we’re dealt. Thanks to my fellow ETA Bea Voorhees, I had the chance to impersonate Bob Ross and paint the Czech landscape with several classes of students. I’ve included the landscape below. It’s the one with rabbits. I even bought a ticket back from Bea’s place with a painting, and I recovered my rings because I could draw them from memory. You never know when a drawing might come in handy.
While I do paint for profit, I really paint for selfish reasons.
I covet mementos more lasting than my memories and more meaningful than an iphone photo. I want to thank those who have generously taken me on adventures (and there have been many). But I also hope that many years from now, when they are dusting the bookcase, they will see my little painting of Beskydy or Krokonoše or the Vltava or the humble Bečva, and remember me just as I remember them.
5. Stop when I can only make the picture worse.
It’s not an exact science.
My paintings and drawings don’t put the enchantment back into the scene. I’m not vain enough to make that claim. But when I look, really look at the fragment I caught in the camera, and I do my best to recreate it, I meditate on the memory of the place. I revisit the castles and cities and mountains when I carve their silhouettes on the page. A bit of the enchantment returns to me then.
When I go hunting for pictures, I see the world differently. Any old path or tree or building could be a masterpiece in the making. In the winter, when the darkness dwarfed the daylight, I realized that I could even see the beauty in the twilight geometry of the block housing. I had written these apartments off as eyesores and blights on the Czech townscape, until I considered them through a painter’s lens. It is a conscious decision to look at the world this way (for me at least. Other people may be blessed enough to see the whole waking world as a potential gallery). You can find a metaphor in that, if you feel inclined to look into it.
I don’t draw people. At least, not in detail. A small figure gives a sense of scale, and I need to communicate the enormity of Ardšpach somehow. I could invent some metaphor to explain away my lack of people. I could say something about how we as people forget how small we are in the grand scheme of things. Or that our small role changes the scene. It wouldn’t be false. It also wouldn’t be true. In all honesty, people are beyond my talents. Like Franz Joseph.
However, people are an indispensable component of every piece of art I’m really proud of. Each picture is a memory of an adventure that I shared with someone else: my students, my mentor, my fellow teachers, my fellow Fulbrighters, or my friends that I have made in the past few months. It gives me so much joy to share a painting months later and relive the adventure with the people who shared it.
I have a hard time parting with them.
A knack for drawing comes in handy sometimes. My pictures have helped me repay my debts. Specifically, my Christmas cookie debt; I don’t have the space here to adequately praise the generosity and baking skills of the Gymnazium Jakuba Škody English department. A painting is not an equal trade for a box of perníčky and linecké, but we all must play the hand we’re dealt. Thanks to my fellow ETA Bea Voorhees, I had the chance to impersonate Bob Ross and paint the Czech landscape with several classes of students. I’ve included the landscape below. It’s the one with rabbits. I even bought a ticket back from Bea’s place with a painting, and I recovered my rings because I could draw them from memory. You never know when a drawing might come in handy.
While I do paint for profit, I really paint for selfish reasons.
I covet mementos more lasting than my memories and more meaningful than an iphone photo. I want to thank those who have generously taken me on adventures (and there have been many). But I also hope that many years from now, when they are dusting the bookcase, they will see my little painting of Beskydy or Krokonoše or the Vltava or the humble Bečva, and remember me just as I remember them.
Photo: Jeseníky Mountains with my Septima class, October, 2023.
