Art has value only if it has character and if it doesn’t express what is expected of it. When painting, I keep away from other influences and I search out what I love. I attempt to use intuitive intelligence and not fall victim to circumstances that may interfere with my self-exploration, says Jarmila Vesović, an accomplished Serbian and Montenegrin painter.
 |
Born in Cetinje and educated in Belgrade, Jarmila continued her postgraduate studies in painting in Paris with a French government grant. Living in France, she has directed her creativity towards a very specific lyric meditation. By combining her Mediterranean culture, Byzantine legacy and modern expression, she creates new worlds in continual movement. |
Jarmila’s signature is a mixture of airy and fine calligraphy that resemble cobwebs, and brush strokes full of energy. Using matter and broken light, she assembles planes and builds textures that interweave thick threads of coloured matter. Colour and thickening matter are not only a need to determine the centre of composition but they are also psychological.
"Signature is very important for an artist. An artist should belong to his time and must in some way reflect society, but the artist must at the same time preserve something individual. I want my paintings to present the sky and earth, the coordinates within which an inner world and experience unfold. This closed world is to me a fraction of the cosmos to which I aspire. Actually, a picture that has no personal experience is like a poem without poetry.
Avoiding unilateral meaning, Jarmila tries to give more support to every element that is included in the building of her paintings. For instance, the gold colour that frequently appears on her canvases is a personal symbol and is associated with gold in icons. At the same time, the gold of icons points to her spiritual and artistic heritage and to her long experience in restoring medieval art.
"My approach to work is very rational and is constructed not only with emotions but also by a kind of figuration, structure and matter that breaths with the experience gained during the restoration of frescoes and icons. This technology has brought a new tone to my paintings. I try to paint so that each painting contains a vibration and light defined by architecture and geometry."
|
Jarmila’s paintings resemble landscapes as a mixture of natural elements, micro-cosmos and macro-cosmos. The names of cycles clearly illustrate her choice: "The Large Terrarium", "Aquarium", "Music Boxes", "Landscapes", "Angel Traces"… When observing her artistic world, one might ask "Where is man?"
"My painting is actually turned to a man looking at paintings and to his soul, which is the most unknown part of man. Man is the most important part of the cosmos, while the human soul is the greatest secret, and I am trying to establish a relationship between various elements. As one astrologist said – a scientist is an artist who resolves the secret of new relations in nature. Perhaps the artistic creation is actually to find new relationships inside matter". |
 |
Searching for the new relationship, Jarmila Vesović has arrived to poetry. Her first collection L’Ombre d’heures secrets (A Shadow of the Secret Hours) published in 2001 in French, was a surprise to many acquainted with her painting.
"Writing poetry had its origin in the titles of paintings that my husband said resemble poems. He encouraged me to write because he thinks that my verses sound beautiful and he placed my first poems on the Internet along with my paintings. It is interesting that the public reacted more to my poems than to my paintings."
Refusing to accept compromise is the moral, intellectual and creative responsibility of every artist. However, this can lead to losing the broader public and clientele. The unpredictable circumstances that surround a painter can sometimes be frightening, but can also be a strong driving force.
"A painter’s life is difficult and is exposed to many unpredictable circumstances. In other lines of work, if one is confirmed in one’s work, a physician for instance, nobody will tell them what to do and how to work. Painters, however, are always put to the test – the jury selects, the jury refuses… Also, new eras bring new technologies and new ways of expression. Many find contemporary tendencies superior to heritage, but what we call heritage today was once modern. Thus today’s technologies are also transient and one should take from them what will make man stronger, richer and more beautiful. Andrea Solario, the Renaissance painter, wrote that beauty is in change."
|
Coloration as blood picture
"The Renaissance sfumato is the colour of emotional value, which doesn’t mean that introducing "sfumato" had nothing to do with reason. Reason and emotions should be kept in balance. To conceive what we know and are familiar with, we should transform it through emotions. Kierkegaard says speaks of emotional intelligence, perhaps the strongest of all, which sends us the most beautiful perception of life. Hence I hold that my pictures are determined by the life I lead, and that their colouration is my blood picture. I haven’t chosen my colouration, but it has chosen me as an echo of first love, first impressions and childhood. Sometimes I think that the light we seek is not the one we see but the one with which we are born." |
VAN GOGH'S DRAWING
Expecting a pain
To ignite the centre of the world
I am in your arms
And death
Is the alley of cypresses between us
The house of nothingness
Gains its irreversible shape
The rising sun moistens the lips
In the drawing
The judge of ornaments
Breathe, a mighty wave.
Jarmila Vešović,
"L'Ombre d'heures secretes", 2001 | 
