Florian Svitak lives deliberately. His art and being, as in Henry David Thoreau's Walden, personify the search to find meaning and center in existing and metaphorical woods. Svitak's art embodies a spirit of conviviality honoring respect for nature eternal. In making his painting, he lives fully. Accepting and understanding that nothing external changes the true forces of nature but a life celebrating and sharing in its light make the temporal human experience a joyous adventure.

The three acres in Harford County, Maryland, that belonged to his grandparents and where he's lived since 1970 comprise the sanctuary that nourishes Florian Svitak's creative and emotional spirit. The property, he says, "is very dear to me . . . as a child, this house was magical, and I know that this is where I belong . . . it is a place to call home."

Walking with him is a sojourn through overgrown flora, a vista of trees beyond a broad meadow, thickets of roses and hollyhocks, blackbirds' nests and the occasional encounter with a chicken. He shares wonderment at the intelligence of nature as butterflies perform their acrobatics in tandem, and the beautiful patterns made by next winter's stacks of firewood. Svitak finds aesthetic interest and elegant art in every form: natural, man-made or some combination thereof.

The American poet Theodore Roethke (1908-1963) wrote,
"What I love is near at hand.
Always, in earth and air."

Their consonance would be understandable as Svitak observes and reveres the grand and minute poetics of the natural and personal world.

Empathy to the cycles of life is fundamental to his work. The meadow is often a focus of his paintings as it continually evolves, the green gardens change and there are countless colors and qualities of leaves to capture. The light shifts every day. "There is more here than I can ever paint, so why go somewhere else?" And paint he does with immediacy and poetry.

Svitak's paintings are not landscapes in the traditional sense of the genre; they are reflections of what he calls his surround, and they are becoming increasingly more intimate. He captures moments in time with energy moving from the view to his body, mind and soul.

To be present, active, making visual decisions and resolving problems is most important in Florian's process. For him, the paintings either work or they don't and he paints until satisfied or else he scrapes the canvas only to start over. He rarely goes back to a painting after one sitting, and if he is determined, he will patiently wait until the correct season to recapture the precise time.

The clarity found making paintings, although occasionally emotionally wrenching, is most gratifying for Svitak. He remains fascinated as each painting unfolds and is dedicated to the particular imagery of the natural. Yet, he does allow himself to step away, to look inward where intellectual and emotional work continues.

There is constant renewal, especially after a physical pause when other life issues get in the way. It is in this constant discovery, the pulling back of layers, that truth and understanding emerges. This is what Svitak shares with his fellow travelers especially his students.

"When making art is really part of your life, everything else is residue . . . ." He then adds, contradictorily, ". . . a full life is much greater than simply art."

Behind his field easel, Svitak captures small bits of something in the enormity of nature and life's contradictions. He says,

"As Walt Whitman wrote in Leaves of Grass,
'We have thus far exhausted trillions of winters and summers,
There are trillions ahead, and trillions ahead of them.'"