Tereza Říčanová grew up in the Vinohrady neighbourhood of Prague. After attending an applied arts high school, she enrolled at AAAD, in the Illustration and Graphics studio under Professor Jiří Šalamoun. Here she also met a number of future friends and colleagues, began working with the Baobab publishing house, and remains one of their key authors to this day (to name just a few of her books: The Goat Book, The Easter Book, The Christmas Book, Noah’s Ark, and most recently The World in Pictures). But after graduating, she left the city and for the last nineteen years she has been living on a farm in the region of Vysočina near Pelhřimov, where she and her husband have five children, a donkey, horses, two dogs, chickens...
The countryside around Mezná, where she found her home, is raw and not always pleasant. In winter the roads get snowed in, and buildings are cozy only if there is a fire crackling in the stove. Life here is more affected by the seasons, and no amount of individual strength can change that. And precisely here are the roots of Tereza’s work. Here she paints and keeps the fire going. She cooks on the stove, feeds the chickens, and records her dreams. She listens to her neighbours’ stories, and collects books of fairy tales.
She draws from great narratives, but also from down-home talk, from the landscape, from their traditions and songs. She builds on them and breathes new life into them. And like all good storytellers, she isn’t too prone to speculation. Her portrayal of nightmares and miracles is sometimes naïve, at other times almost harsh in its pragmatism. She simply lives among them. She’s seen her Vision. She’s dreamt dreams. She’s collected landscapes during her travels. And through books, she’s simply sharing them.