Czech artist Hana Auerova spoke to national magazine Respekt this month about balancing family life with her career.
Hana began painting whilst she was on maternity leave with her first child in 2011. Sick of feeling that she hadn't followed her dream, she entered a Czech business start-up competition, 'My First Million'. Her idea was to animate her own paintings to stories she had written for her own children. She lives in Zlin, Czech Republic, which is an area famous for classical animation - and it felt important to her to work within this tradition, animating the paintings using traditional methods rather than digitally.
Hana won the competition, which has given her confidence to follow her dream and trust in it. Since then she has used the themes from her paintings to create her own animated film, Jezisek. She has also written scenarios of forty short stories for the most visited Czech internet TV channel, Stream.
