Jelena Petkovic

My body of work consist mostly of figurative oil paintings which are dominated by portraits of women. They are recognizable by the use of geometric shapes that construct the portrait and the background, and by bright contrasting colors.

My drawings are not realistic, rather naïve or even cartoonesque, and I use them as a platform for the painting’s theme, which come alive through the details in the painting.

Geometry helps me building the idea of each painting. It’s like a book, made out of many words but having one central theme behind it. Each shape is a symbol of one or several parts of ourselves. We can be calm but passionate, kind but angry, we can’t be put in a few words and even if we could, we are forever changing and a part of a bigger picture: family, country, culture, humanity. The geometry is a tool to construct a story in a harmonious image where everything has its own place.

I enjoy colors, their brightness and strong contrast simply because they give me a positive sensation, they make me automatically happy. When looking at my paintings, I want the joyous combination of colors to be the first impression, bringing high energy to the story that unfolds in the details.

It feels to me that the biggest problem of today is that we feel separated from everyone and everything. It seems that it’s the root cause of the ecological crisis, of wars, of violence, and generally of the lack of compassion. And yet this is so far from our wishes, no one wants to be alone and excluded from its environment. So in my paintings I take the portrait of a human, a woman, and I make her part of a story, I intertwine her with her environment. Through colors I want to show the vibrant beauty of everything, and through a portrait, us as a part of it.