Painting for me is a continuous conversation with the outside world. This dialogue is only possible while I am in the studio. My thoughts are directed by the physicality of paint. The paintings emerge out of the intensity of colours and pigments that I use, its thickness, translucency, lightness or darkness. My work is deeply visceral. I am driven by what paint can do moreover, by what I can do with the paint. The combination of textures, colours, light, shades and shapes add layers to the visual meaning in my work, and the movements of my brush becomes a phenomenon which guides our perception to the very energetic frequency that is driving my thoughts, and subsequently the actual art making.
Painting is a very speculative process; the paint awakens my senses and allows me to think in a particular way. I observe nature, situations and people in the context of their own lives. I try to understand how things around me exist and why they exist in the way they do. I take things in and out of my mind. This selection process is a constant interrogation of thoughts and materials.
Mixing the paint is an intuition. In my work, it is not possible to predict how colours would relate to one another, sometimes the most extreme hues balance with the movement of my brush, and at other times, they shout at each other. My process is intense. It requires the equilibrium of my physical togetherness, independence on my mind and openness of my soul.
The speed of my brush and the hues that I use create the painting. Every brushstroke that I apply onto the canvas and every swirl in combination with another, or in relation to the space around, is suggestive to another relationship or possibility. So, in painting, everything co-exists in relation to another element. The main agenda is always light. The light captured in the painting is the soul of the painting, and the movement of my brush determines its personality. I am constantly astonished by how a single movement of the brush can change the energy of the entire painting, and how the touch of paint on the canvas can produce something so complex as swirl, in a single moment.
Many artists say that the best things happen by accident. In my process, the best things happen in the moments when chance and pression unite. This is when everything falls in place and the decision making that follows is direct and confident.
As a painter, I’m in a flux of relentless searching. Through painting, I can access the plane of being where my intensely conscious mind reaches the unconscious stillness. Here, there is a different kind of world, and from there my work unfolds. This is almost as being connected to infinite source of inspiration and traveling from chaos to composure. The continuous possibility of transformation where the unknown become more explicable and accessible fills me with excitement.
Another aspect of my work is the swirls. These hold a symbolic connotation - there is a universal quality to them and as such, they are somewhat timeless and formless. They come and go, captivating our perceptions of them even when they are motionless. To me they reflect the essence of being. Sometimes the swirls are constructed in layers and the layering continues until the painting reaches a point where it is impossible to understand how they have been painted. Sometimes the swirls manifest the suggestion that they are a smaller section of a larger form, which exists outside of the picture plane; they keep overlapping until the entire surface begins to resonate with the energetic field of our being.
In each painting, I capture a little bit of our essence. I see swirls as a part of an ultimately inconceivable world and when represented in a picture, they convey this mystery all the more powerfully. They are used as a metaphor for the transcendental side of the meanings to make visible reality that we can neither see nor describe at first, but only assume. So, in many ways, and to summarize this prolonged thought, it seems that the energy of our being is the main inspiration to my work and it is that very energy that I am continuously painting.
Dragica Carlin, August 2017
