"My father also went to church on Sundays and they told me my daddy was some kind of weirdo. Then I begged my mother not to say anything at the dairy because the lady who worked there was a confidante [of State Security – trans.]. These were selected people, women who were always looking out of the window, observing and writing references, for example, that I was going to Prague for unknown purposes. Well, tell me, what does that look like? I went to see a professor, for example. Or I burned old drawings that I didn't need to keep, so I burned them in the garden at Střekov, and the lady wrote that I was burning things of an unknown nature. Perhaps the lady thought I was a spy. That's the way it was done."
"I chose glass painting and came under the tutelage of Professor Libenský, whom we will know, his name rings a bell. That was basically my good luck. We were in such a fortunate time. It was so established that even the older students who were interested would go out and draw. ’Come with us, we will be drawing.’ I was amazed, I took a pencil and paper and that's how we learned. Then from time to time they asked the professor if they could show what they had done at home as homework. Not that we were given homework, but we were learning on our own, which I consider very fortunate because we were trying harder."
Jaroslav Prášil was born on 26 May 1946 in Ústí nad Labem. In 1952 he started attending primary school and around the fifth grade he began to show artistic inclinations. After graduating from the eight-year primary school, he enrolled at the glass industrial school in Železný Brod, where he studied glass painting under the guidance of the famous professor Stanislav Libenský. After graduation, he continued his studies at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague where, in addition to the glass studio, he also attended the studio of textile techniques. In 1971, he began a year of basic military service in Ústí nad Labem and Roudnice nad Labem. He then began teaching at the Department of Art Education at the Faculty of Education of the J Jan Evangelista Purkyně University in Ústí nad Labem, which he headed from 1975. In 1993, he co-founded the Institute of Art Education at the Faculty of Education, which was transformed into the independent Faculty of Art and Design at Jan Evangelista Purkyně University in Ústí nad Labem in 2000. Here he took over the management of the Natural Materials Studio. At the time of recording (2023) he lived in Ústí nad Labem and still worked part-time as a teacher at the aforementioned faculty.
