Jarmila Džuppová is a painter living and working in Michalovce. The committee especially appreciated the distinctiveness of her visual language against the dominant currents in Slovak contemporary painting. Her paintings – often large scale and painted on plywood in oil or with other techniques – resemble drawings, both formally and in approach; more like a journal than constructed “pieces”. In her work she reflects many phenomena characteristic of contemporary painting – simplified and expressive drawing, deliberately unfinished, destroyed color layers, painting unbound from its traditional framework. In parallel, she polemicizes through such seemingly outmoded strategies as narration and literariness (side products of symbols which refer partly to daily introspection via her diary), while at the same time there are also certain aspects of imagination and folklore. Džuppová primarily paints motifs from her environment which are close to her. She is inspired by concrete situations, which she visualizes in an unmistakable individual style which is a combination of urban folklore and animal motifs.