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The need to wholeheartedly devote myself to painting, day and night, forced me to quit my second year of study at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Belgrade (Ex-Yugoslavia), and move to a place where I could focus. Fortunately, a new Faculty of Fine Arts had just been founded in Cetinje (Montenegro), where I had never been before. This is where I saw my chance to focus freely on exploring my practice and finish my studies.
80. Atelier, Sun, oil on canvas, 100 cm x 144 cm, 1991, Cetinje, Montenegro, sold
There was nothing in Cetinje for me. No TV, no cinemas, no washing machines... Culture and civilization were almost entirely absent. I painted about a hundred oil paintings. I graduated as a fairly mature painter.
109 Self-portrait 1, Oil on canvas, 200 cm x 145 cm, 1992, Belgrade, Serbia
Self-portrait installation
As a young painter, I had just begun to set a professional path, full of enthusiasm, ambition and talent when the war began. Opportunities were vanishing in front of me, closed borders, sanctions, embargoes, cultural deficits; horizons narrowed as did interests. The world came down to uncertain survival. I locked myself in my studio and dedicated myself to the introspective “self-portrait project”.
An introspective and hermetic approach to the work led me through the subject matter of the painting. The next project was «Looking Back». This new position of observing beyond the body made it possible to recapitulate seven steps back to conception, by abstract painting.
131. Looking back 4, oil on canvas, 146 cm x 114 cm , 1994, Belgrade, Serbia
147. Family, Pan, acrylic on paper, 165 cm x 150 cm, 1996, Paris, France
I went to Paris in 1995-96 and got to know Western culture in its full glory, at a time of techno-rave culture that was already disappearing in London, while it still continued in Paris. Directly from Belgrade, out of the gloomy darkness and authentic turbo-folk created at the same time. I was born again with a new phase of painting and learning about the world from scratch. The paintings were created through a process of silent retention, forming screens of self-reflection that project fictions. A limited stay in the ateliers of “La Cité Internationale des Arts de la Ville de Paris“, on Montmartre conditioned me to paint fast, with a fluorescent acrylic technique.
Going into the world, I was no longer tied to personal searches per se. I decided to practice, to perfect the technique. Among painters, it is considered hardest to draw the human body and the biggest challenge for any artist and painter are hands. That is why I decided that the hands should be the focus of my project of improving drawing and painting technique.
155. Hands 2, oil on canvas, 145 cm x 145 cm, 1997, Belgrade, Serbia, sold
These are the late 90’s, my 30’s. The process of painting is cut into fragments, exploring reproduction, organization, organism, biological reproduction, sexual energy and fruits. View from the male and female perspective. Although I was married to painting, my hormonal composition and strong libido outweighed this when given the opportunity. This cycle was fruitful in more ways than one – it resulted in the founding of a family.
213R. Sequences : Female Watching, oil on canvas, 12 x 38 cm x 46 cm, 2001, Belgrade, Serbia, sold
233. Housewife blue, oil on canvas, 90 cm x 100 cm, 2003. Belgrade Serbia, sold
My experience of equality between religions, nationalities, races and genders did not quite prepare me for what was to come. I became a real woman in twenty years.
284. The forest, acrylic on canvas, 100 cm x 190 cm, 2018. Belgrade Serbia
Now I find myself in Panromantic Asexual Queer. As a painter, I was born again. Free for new paintings and looking their place in the world.
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