About Nikola Ivanovic

Hi everybody! I`m a professional artist and art teacher with a lifelong passion for oil painting and all of its many possibilities. My work consists primarilly of Landscapes and still lives, as well as an occassional portrait or figure study, whenever an opportunity arises (models aren`t always easy to come by). I prefer working from life, whenever possible because the intensity of interaction and wealth of nuance given to the artist by witnessing his subjects up close and personal is sometimes diminished or even lost when using photographic reference. Sometimes I find my style difficult to define. I wouldn`t even call it a single way of approaching the task of painting. What i do with each individual piece depends largely on the subject matter. For landscapes, I am frequently interested in the partial dissolution of form in order to explore relations between coloured surfaces, searching for interesting colour harmonies. Nature is overflowing with opportunity for recording such harmonies as well as adjusting them to suit the overall feel of the work. I also have a bit of a musical background which I think influences the way in which I approach my painting, even though the connection might not be obvious at first, but its deffinitelly there. For still lives, the approach is quite different. I prefer accurate rendering and a high amount of detail. I love depicting old and worn objects which I sometimes associate with their previous owners.