In this period of my painting journey, I have allowed my hand to paint freely on its own. The paintings have emerged from a subconscious or superconscious liberation, direct movements and gestures. The symbols and signs were not sought, but found in the energy and temperament of my three children, who are not yet of school age. The environment in which I move consists of a children’s room, kitchen, and the terrace of a rented apartment.
I dared to paint on anything: regular paper, cardboard, canvas of any size. I paint the way my two-year-old daughter Sofia scribbles on the walls, or how my five-year-old Angelina draws a disheveled female figure and says, “This is my mom.” I still cannot keep up with my seven-year-old son Lava, who paints Spider-Man.
I imagine what it would be like if a camera entered and recorded what happens in children’s dreams! I would love to bring such a camera into my own dreams! Of all the arts, painting offers the most freedom. Because it is in space, in colors, in the movement of lines… but the freedom of painting is neither gentle nor modest. As Van Gogh confessed, “To paint one picture is as difficult as finding a diamond.”
The essence of painting is in itself, in its own criteria. Everything I might try to explain in my paintings, I know it is not painting.
I love to place colors that do not harmonize. Only black, green, and red create a triad of unity. The most expressive of them are found in Velázquez, the painter of all painters. I love the color black—it enters the world to make beauty possible. This is how Coco Chanel thought as well.
I strive to paint.
“THEY WILL LIKE IT ONE DAY,” said Ludwig Van Beethoven.
Milica Šujica Vučetić