Zuzana Vaňková has been painting and drawing since she learned how to hold a pencil. At the age of five she started attending an art-focused primary and then high school, where she stayed until she was sixteen. After that, she traded her paintbrushes for dancing classes and preferred other things than visual arts.


A few years later she travelled to Sweden as an au pair, where, without knowing what she was doing, she bought a set of four Faber Castell technical markers, a box of watercolour paints and a sketchbook with pages of completely inadequate paper. She began to fight the loneliness she was drowning in by doodling vegetables that were in her host family's stash. A couple of times they bought something just to give her something to draw.


But besides a sketchbook full of art, she also brought depression back home with her from Sweden. Despite this, she didn't stop painting, and for a while painting became the only activity she showed interest in and was able to pursue despite her ongoing intense depressive episode. Zuzana decided to fight her depression; thus, during one of her bad episodes, Medvěd (Bear) was created as a result of her need to get some things out of her.


In the context of what she has produced artistically, Bear is more or less an exception. Years later, she eventually ended up creating mainly landscapes and urban sketching. She never stopped painting completely after that. She doesn't stay with one technique for long, she tries a bit of everything. Sometimes she says, half jokingly, that she paints because she doesn't know what else to do. But when she thinks about it, she's not entirely joking.