The whole story is a concept of my life as an author.                            If you go chronologically, from the beginning of my posts, you’ll see my art from the time of my studies at the Academy of Art.                          The whole story develops simultaneously with my life.                          I have always had an interest in lively, clear and bright colors

In addition to painting, I also do body art and public performances.              It is there that I noticed the facial expressions of the people and I pick up their criticisms and comments. At the same time, I retreated into solitude and painted the stone blocks of tombstones, but again, in warm colors.      In 2001, I left that phase behind me, as well as my wild and passionate lifestyle. I learned then that I would become a mother while still studying and so my story got a new direction – researching the form of the fetus and painting what I had been going through. I felt fulfilled and loved. I did not drop out of my studies and I was very happy to become a mother.

However, soon after graduating, my child and I were left alone. I had a divorce. And that was the time when I stared painting, to tell the story of my marriage. I went back to stone shapes and graves, to mute and shapeless human faces. I painted them in big formats and series and I called them unspoken and unfinished people.

Right after my divorce, I started working in an elementary school where I felt chained and limited to continue my artistic development in the way that I wanted it. I had also dedicated myself to parenting and I became a stereotypical small town woman where everyone knows each other well.

There were some art exhibitions, but just once a year, hidden in a way and without any fireworks. I usually used the school breaks to relax and express myself and my life story, to recharge and prepare new school themes. I painted harlequins with the clown nose and that was how the story started – how I see myself in a mirror. Smudged and alone, as a portrait, in 12 parts, one for each month of the year. The only light at the end of the tunnel was my motherhood and the feedback I got.

After those self-portraits in 2010/2011, I started drawing on small formats pencil shapes of court jester’s face with round-shaped nose, emphasized and twisted smile and eyes – I used anything that could say that the jester wasn’t happy even though he was smiling, but he was always alone, anticipating someone similar, of similar visual and personal characteristics to follow him around.

Years passed by, my emotional story had its ups and downs. I recorded it all in my work. I organized exhibitions, I listened to the public, the comments and the criticisms. I found the strength to entangle the story and let everyone find themselves in my self-portraits, to live through the jester. I started combining techniques using different colors depending on my moods.

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Drawing became more intense with color, the canvases got a different context from what they had in the beginning of my self-portraits. I painted small formats but in great detail, playing with perspective and shortening shapes, facial expressions, hugs, kissing. I bared the story and gave it the passion that I subconsciously lacked. That was the period of 2014-2016 when I painted and worked at school teaching but felt even more caged and limited by time and conservative demands of the work place. But somehow, the public consciousness started changing and we became more tolerant adopting the codes of behavior of European countries so we became freer and open and I started incorporating that in my work with children. I did analysis of the present through visual communication, advertising, movies…In that process, I matured too, and became more open and self-conscious and free in expression. Then I learned that criticisms about my 2016 opus were very positive and that people were eager to see and know raw, human themes without pretenses and masks, as natural as possible. I started painting 100x70cm canvases which seemed at first too small for my expression and energy. I started representing groups of intertwining human bodies with some clown make-up residue but without the nose and in a blue phase. That was the time of my self-questioning of my freedom and how far I could go and open myself.

In the beginning, it was only the nuances of blue color which can represent people in love in many ways, hugging, floating in mid-air, unaware of what is happening. It is only the act and the moment of love seen in their facial expressions assisted with concentric circles like a spiral turning, just like a life cycle at the ancient beginning of everything, with the very first thing that man sees and touches, and that is the nipple of a woman’s breast. The whole concept is actually in the eye of the beholder and the beauty is in having the public impressed, stopped, frozen in the moment while observing the whole at first and then the details. It pushes them in self-questioning as well – Is it more people or one? Is that freedom? Is that the special feeling of one woman and one man? Or is it a real expression of the essence of love in the moment of climax? Is the man overwhelmed with the feeling that he is not alone?Does the partner feel the same? Is the partner present? Is it passionate and alive? Can the frozen moment be sped up?  It can. There starts my new phase. With mixing more scenes into one love moment, adding warmer but still contrasting orange tones to create the passion and beauty of an orgasm. When the man is relaxed and open and trusts the partner, often changes positions and plays little mischievous games, he creates an interesting and warm human connection. Then trust is born and masks fall off in this space of intimacy when everything becomes a moment of tremble, spasm of the body and that satisfied smile and expression in the eyes is what leads the spectator to catharsis and introspection.                    WHERE AM I IN ALL OF THIS?                                                              AM  I  BRAVE  ENOUGH  TO  LOVE  AND EXPERIENCE THAT CLIMAX’ CAN THAT BE PUBLICLY SHOWN AND SPOKEN?                                              DO I HAVE A PERSON  WHO CAN A COMPANY  ME AT  THIS  JOURNEY?

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Using art, the painter speaks of him/herself, his or her perception of things. Personal perspective is the mark of an intimate manuscript of one academic painter who has decided to communicate a message, to share it with people, but not by doing series or reproductions of the same because it is impossible to recapture the same pleasure. And time is passing by and everything carries a message. One canvas has to speak of many things, it has to be a powerful message in details of endless possibilities and never be a finished whole. It is always a story written with a promising sequel. New images will probably come in orange tones but for now I will stick to the cut-up forms, zooming on specific details. I want to achieve that kind of communication with the spectators so they can have a true artistic impression – their skin crawling, having an urge to touch the painting, to share in the story of it and project themselves into it. Because, in the end, art is human and it should have a message. In this case, it is desirable for the public to have their own individual and personal felling of the art.                                      Finally..One way of reproducing my art I plan to do with clothes, which I have started already. I plan to incorporate some everyday items, furniture… New energy has awoken in me and now I have some serious plans for busines. T.G.

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Memoirs from 2017