PORTRAITS

Self-portrait, OIL on canvas

For this work, I wanted to incorporate the layers of my identity as influenced by my heritage and the context I live in. I decided to flirt with the style of painting used in the orthodox icons (nodding to my Serbian origin) while presenting myself as if taking a selfie. My idea was to create a sense of two-dimensionality, both as an homage to a particular artistic form, but also as an ironic comment to the selfie culture.

A portrait of my sister, acrylic on canvas

My sister’s portrait has just traces of Orthodox Icon references and is much closer to the iconography of selfies. As the younger of two, she drifts further than me from our heritage, from our mother tongue, from the past. On the time-line, she is the one who is closest to me, the one whose history and personality I know the best, and therefore he rportrait is the most vivid in colour (as opposed to the black and white portraiture of our maternal grandparents).

Great-grandma, Oil on Canvas

“It can be very freeing - without the complexities of working in colour, you can experiment with form, texture, mark making, and symbolic meaning.” Upon reading this quote from Leila Packer and Jennifer Sliwka, I was inspired to explore my familial relationships and Serbian heritage solely through black and white paint. Grayscale enhanced my feeling of texture and dimension and my focus turned deeper into my emotional connection with my maternal grandparents. Lack of colour came to represent my lack of familiarity with their past.

Grandparents, Oil paint on canvas

Grandparents, Pencil on paper

The primary focus of this piece was to achieve detail and intricacy and represent the different textures of skin, hair and clothing. I attained this effect by using a variety of tones in my shading, many different pencils and a mix of mark making techniques from cross hatching to lines to circular motions.

**My response to the painting Dieja by Scott Lancashire, acrylic on paper**

In this work, I emphasise the boldness, robustness and the landscape feel of the facial features. I added orange, yellows and more greens to the palette of the original to bring to the surface a female warrior quality that I sensed in Dieja.

**My response to the self-portrait Reverse by Jenny Saville, acrylic on paper**

I was moved by the vulnerability in the horizontal positioning of the face and the space that naked skin takes in the frame. I enhanced this vulnerability through distortion of facial features, especially lips, and adding colour red to make the skin appear more raw.

My response to a black and white portrait by Wilhelm Sasnal, acrylic on paper

When first viewing Sansal’s portrait, I was immediately intrigued by the way he depicted the depth of unclear emotions in the woman’s face. Therefore, in my response, I decided to play with this idea. Firstly, I made this the focus of my piece by repositioning the woman so that her eyes faced forward, as if to the person viewing the painting. Moreover, I used the slightly distorted and vague shapes of the features, such as the nose and mouth, to emphasize the uncertainty of her expressions.

Portrait of Dr. Jitendra Rathod, acrylic on paper

This portrait was part of my NHS Heroes Project, which commemorates fallen NHS workers in the COVID 19 pandemic. I hope that this painting may fairly capture and remember the “dearly loved” Welsh heart surgeon, Dr. Jitendra Rathod, a “compassionate and wonderful human being.”

lullaby, acrylic on paper

On my mother’s back, I wrote by hand the lyrics of a Serbian lullaby that she used to sing to me when I was small. I then asked her to sit opposite a painting of a famous Serbian artist, Olja Ivanjicki. The contours of my mother’s shape became a holder of my memories