ARTISTS AMONG US
/Jiri Thiemer enjoying a moment at milano.
JIRI THEIMER
Traditional Art To Unique Sculptures
by Ashima Shukla
(click images to enlarge)
I almost don't recognize him until I spot the jacket.
It's a Monday afternoon at Milano Coffee on Denman, and draped over the back of Jiri Theimer's chair is a hand-painted denim jacket. Every classic rock band's name is lettered across it with an exactness that seems almost impossible by hand. By the time he smiles and waves me over, introducing me to his wife Jana beside him, whatever nerves I'd brought with me are already gone.
He insists on getting me coffee — with oat milk, he explains, because it's their favourite. And over the next hour, somewhere between the early summer breeze and the conversation with two people who have spent decades finishing each other's sentences, I find myself listening to the story of a man who has spent most of his life working hard enough to survive, and painting hard enough to feel alive.
BORN WITH A TALENT …
When I ask Jiri to take me back to the beginning, Jana is the one who answers first.
Jiri’s Painting of Venice (Jiri Theimer Photo)
"When he was six years old, in school, he painted a picture so beautifully that his teachers were really surprised," she says, leaning forward slightly. "They were really impressed with what he can paint, his technique and eye for colour."
So little Jiri started painting for his classmates, encouraged by every impressed face that looked at his work. Eventually, he chose to study art formally, learning the techniques of the masters — anatomy and composition from Michelangelo, perspective from Da Vinci. He even tried his hand at Picasso, though he laughs a little when he admits it never quite resonated with him. You can still see glimpses of those influences in his work today: most vividly in his driftwood sculptures, which carry the strange, dreamlike quality of Salvador Dali.
In fact, he was a thriving artist in Venice once. Jiri recalls with a particular fondness how his paintings would be claimed before he'd even finished them. His work from that period ranged widely: portraits, landscapes, the European countryside, sunflowers, and the stained-glass windows of old churches catching the afternoon light.
AN IMMIGRANT’S STORY
But his life hasn’t always been so easy.
Jiri was born in what was then Czechoslovakia. But his story in Canada begins in 1985, when he arrived in Windsor, Ontario, and found work on a car factory floor. He made friends quickly — Jiri has the kind of charm that tends to pull people in — including one generous man who helped him and his then-wife settle into their new country. A portrait Jiri painted of him now hangs at The Red Accordian on Alberni.
Driftwood sculptures made by Jiri Theimer (Jiri Thiemer Photo)
Eventually, Jiri began to hear about Vancouver. Something in the description of it called to him in a way he couldn't quite explain. So, in 1989, he packed again and moved west.
Here, he found work with a friend's roofing company. "I don't like that job much because it's, you know, it was heavy," he says, plainly. It wasn't just the physical labour; the pay made everything harder. Eventually he took the leap and started his own business — painting houses, then renovations, then hardwood floors. It's still his day job, though he says he hopes to leave it behind within the next two years.
You can see these years in Jiri's face if you look. But you can also see something else, brighter than all the hardships he has endured. Because although he is practical enough to understand that art doesn't always pay the rent, his idealistic view of life is what brings him meaning.
It’s most evident when he excitedly tells me about the exhibit showing his landscape paintings at the West End Community Centre, which ran through last month, works that carry the memory of the life he had before this one.
BRINGING OTHER WORLDS TO LIFE …
It was also during those years of hard work that Jiri began experimenting with sculpture, drawn in particular to driftwood. Now, when he finds a piece on the beach, he says, he can already see what it's meant to become. The final form is already clear in his mind; his only job is to bring it out. A crocodile curled in a knot of wood. A figure emerging from grain and knot and time. He doesn't impose the sculpture onto the driftwood so much as he reveals what was always there. These pieces are among his most mesmerising work — natural, inevitable-looking, as if the wood always knew. As if they come with eerie stories from other worlds.
Sunsets are another recurring motif. He finds the ones here in Vancouver to be among the most beautiful he's seen anywhere in the world, and he's noticed that his buyers feel the same pull. "What I see here, people actually like trees, mountains, and the ocean. The sun setting into the water. It makes you feel so good, you know?"
He typically works on several paintings at once, moving between them over the course of two weeks or so before one is complete. Every evening after work, he sits at his easel for two to three hours — sometimes even six. He confesses it's almost an addiction. Once he starts, time disappears.
A PARTNERSHIP IN EVERY SENSE …
This is where Jana proves essential. She'll call him from work to say she'll be home in an hour and come through the door to find him exactly where she left him, still painting, having forgotten to drink water, or discovered mid-session that he's been sitting in an uncomfortable position for so long his legs have cramped.
In their 800-square-foot home, there are paintings in every room — living room, kitchen, bedroom. Three balconies hold oil paintings in various stages of drying.
And as the afternoon goes on, it becomes impossible to talk about Jiri without talking about Jana. She is his translator when his English runs out of steam, his calendar when he loses track of time, his compass when things get complicated — contracts, computers, commitments. In their thirty-two years together, she grounds him so he can float.
"Nothing is forever, but we are still together, you know?" Jiri says, and he means it as a kind of wonder.
Jana laughs. "I think I keep him young."
ALWAYS LEARNING …
Jiri is, by his own admission, a bit of a perfectionist. He studies other artists’ work constantly, to find what pulls it together. He'll be inspired by anything, even something AI-generated, if he thinks there's a technique or an idea worth absorbing into his own practice. What matters is that he keeps moving forward.
“I have another idea,” he says at one point, and drifts into a reverie about pottery. He learned it in school, he says — the clay, the oven, the glaze. He remembers making elephants. He'd like to try again. Then he catches himself and smiles, “I want to make more and more and more art.”
Sunsets painted by Jiri Theimer.
But this is the thing about Jiri. He has turned restlessness into a life philosophy. He dreams a lot, but he works equally hard too.
"If you keep yourself busy, you know, you live for longer, longer and longer. This is true, you know? If you sit in the sofa and watch TV, then, you know, you going to die soon. You have to do something, no?"
WHAT HE WOULD TELL YOU …
For anyone who asks him whether to pursue their art, his answer is immediate. "Don't listen to what people tell you," he says. "It's nice to hear some opinions, yes, some critics. But you have to do what you really like."
For younger people especially, he keeps it simple: just try. Keep going. Time is going to pass either way. The only question is whether you spend it doing the thing that makes you lose track of it. "Because in the end, I am doing it for my own happiness, you know?" he adds.
Jana, characteristically, offers the practical side. "You have to be passionate about it, right? You have to spend a lot of time doing it, and you have to be patient as you build the skills. It's not so easy to just say, 'I want to be an artist.' You have to actually put in the work to make it happen."
Outside Milano, the afternoon has turned golden. I assume Jiri and Jana will soon head back into the neighbourhood where they have built a life out of difficult choices and beautiful things, still painting (or playing tennis) every evening, still learning, still losing track of time. Which, if you ask him, is the whole point.
