If someone had told me a few months ago that one day I would be standing in a gallery, in front of my paintings, and watching people I had never seen before looking at them, photographing them and asking about them, I would have probably thought they were crazy. And if he had told me that all of this would be happening in Barcelona, the city of art, I would probably have burst out laughing.
Not only because it all seemed unrealistic to me, but because it would never occur to me to call myself an artist. I am a journalist who takes pictures in my free time, mostly in a rush of emotions.
My painting "career" started out of boredom. There was a corona virus pandemic, the days dragged on, and I always wanted to have an easel. I thought it was the perfect time to finally buy it. I took four canvases and, to begin with, three colors. And I started painting. The palette hasn't changed much in the meantime, but the works have. Over time, they turned into more serious abstractions, and painting went from a way to pass the time to something I return to because I need it. I mostly kept the pictures on my walls or gave them to friends without thinking that they could ever leave my private space.
And then a completely random outing in a Belgrade bar happened. I entered just as the picture exhibition was being set up. I looked at the works, the walls, the people who put them up and, more in jest than seriously, I thought: "Well, I can do this too." Three months later, my pictures were indeed hanging on the walls of that bar. People came, looked at them, commented, asked questions, and some even bought them. All of a sudden, what I had been doing until then, mainly for myself, began to take on a new character.
At the end of June, I took the pictures off the walls and thought: well, that's it. My five minutes of fame is over.
Except it turns out they weren't. The very next day, I knocked on the door of a newly opened coffee shop in the neighborhood. Their walls were ideal for pictures, so without much ado, I offered to display them. And then, a few days later, quite by chance, I came across a competition for an exhibition in a gallery in Barcelona. I signed up again more as a joke than out of expectation. I sent three papers. Soon an email arrived - two of my works have been selected for exhibition. Man! Someone actually looked at my pictures and judged that they could be in the right gallery. And that, no less and no more, than in Barcelona - the first big city outside of Serbia that I visited and one of my favorite metropolises.
Of course, after the first wave of disbelief came the second one: can I even do this? Is it okay for me to exhibit when I'm not trained for it? Am I just pretending to be an artist and occupying the space of someone who has studied, studied and built his name for years? My ethical dilemmas were serious.
Still, I decided to go. The exhibition was starting in less than twenty days, and transportation, tickets, accommodation and packing had to be organized. And so, in just a few days, I went from someone who bought an easel and three paints out of boredom during the pandemic to someone who organizes the international transport of my own paintings.
A few days later my name was inscribed in a gallery in Barcelona's Gothic Quarter, right next to the museum where Banksy's works are exhibited. And then I stood there. In front of his pictures. In Gaudí's city, where art is not only found behind the doors of museums and galleries, but on facades, balconies, squares and streets.
And now my pictures are in that city and people who don't know me are looking at them. They didn't know who I was or how they came about, how many times I changed some detail or thought they weren't good enough. They stopped, took photos, commented. They inquired about the idea and the price. And then for the first time I really understood what I had done. In a conversation with several educated artists, to whom I expressed my dilemmas, I realized that there was actually no space for them. If I create, if I have the need to create and if I present my work in front of people, maybe I should not decide for myself whether I am qualified enough to allow myself to step out of the usual framework.
A few years ago, my sister asked me, "When was the last time you did something for the first time?" That question keeps coming back to me these days. It seems to me that too often we live by doing what we already know - what we are sure of and what we have confirmation that we are allowed. And maybe freedom is precisely in sometimes doing something for the first time. No license, no warranty and sometimes even no idea what we are doing.
So, out of boredom, I bought an easel. As a joke, I said: "Well, I can do this too" and sent three pictures to the competition. And then I stood in Barcelona, in front of my works and watched completely unknown people looking at them and thought: "Okay. Maybe I really can."
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