Lepopisana

I was twelve when I read my first Agatha Christie. It was The Murder on the Nile and I couldn't pronounce Poirot's name properly. I remember I liked the part of the story where he was questioning the suspects the most. Later I liked to watch films with Peter Ustinov as Poirot. He was OK and I somehow found him funny. But when David Suchet entered the scene I suddenly discovered that for me no other Poirot was really the Poirot, no matter how good actors they were. David Suchet is exactly how Agatha Christie describes Poirot in her books. When I stumbled upon a book Mr. Suchet wrote about being Hercule Poirot, I naturally had to read it. What I expected from the book was that I would read about how it was for David Suchet to play Poirot and it is exactly what I got. He writes a lot about individual stories they filmed, from the first: The Adventures of a Clapham Cook to the last: The Curtain. I liked these descriptions as I saw almost all of them, apart from ...

There was always something alluring in the Beyond, something infinite, full of possibilities. Something we cannot see but can only imagine or not even that ... only sense that it exists, only feel it or even less, only want to feel it. I liked to watch the sea, the line between water and sky, the non-existent border between the two, promising infinity, echoing countless possibilities, something that hasn't happened, but can or at the same time, it cannot. Flat landscapes give me practically the same feeling. Like the one in a painting An Extensive Landscape with a Road by a Ruin by Philips Koninck. Anything can happen over there, beyond, where anything is possible. It may be similar to the void, the great emptiness. Anything is possible in that vastness. T emporally speaking it is just a moment, a point in the process of creation, a point just before we start creating and when anything is possible.  We know what is or what could be beyond the horizon in that painting. Ther...

I once said that I wouldn't be making calligraphic season's greeting cards. I tried once but I didn't like it, neither the end result nor the process of making them, so I decided to leave card making to the people who feel fulfilled by it. When M suggested we make our own greeting cards I almost started to object but decided to hear him out. He said I didn't have to make them, we could have prints of my paintings on the cards. Hmm, interesting. I've seen it done, but never really thought about doing it myself.  So I got to work. Do we have decent photographs? No, we most definitely don't! It worries me from time to time since I'll have to use photographs of my work in my master's thesis. It isn't easy to take pictures of varnished paintings and we haven't mastered that yet. Then I remembered what my teacher once said: just take a photo from the side and correct it in Photoshop. I didn't have Photoshop back then, so I didn't give it...

The first time I read Alice in Wonderland was in school when I was ten. I don't remember what I thought about it. I must have liked it and read it as a little girl's adventure. Alice falls down the rabbit hole and all sort of strange things happen to her. That was basically it. This December I decided to visit an English book club in my local library. The book that we were supposed to read was Alice in Wonderland. I'm not a big fan of children's literature and it was interesting to find out how I felt about reading Alice after more than thirty years. It turned out I liked it. At the time I was reading it I stumbled upon an article discussing Alice in Wonderland and its 150th anniversary. The article said that it was children's and adults' book. But I already knew that. It's full of undertones that couldn't have been meant for children. For example, there's a parody of judicial system, how easy it is to condemn a person, when someone shouts: ...

This year's autumn was exhibition crazy. The magic of this craziness lies in the fact that I wasn't expecting all those exhibitions. I planned the big one, currently in Velenje, but I had no idea there would be so many college exhibitions, including the last one. We usually have a New Year's Welcoming party when students and teachers get together to celebrate the end of the year and welcome the New Year. This year's party was a little different as it included the exhibition. Students had to choose one of their paintings to exhibit, preferably without teacher's help. It was sort of self-evaluating exercise. The result was a huge amount of paintings, drawing and installation pieces, exhibited all over the school. What surprised me most were all the people who came: teachers, students, their parents, friends, partners, small children running around ... There were home-made chocolates and mulled wine smelling of cinnamon. Or perhaps I just imagined cinnamon ... No I ...

The first Bradley's novel I read was Wrack and I really loved his writing. When I came across The Resurrectionist I didn't know what it was about, and to tell the truth, I didn't really care. I still remembered how much I liked Wrack. The novel opens with bodies being brought to the anatomy lecture and how they are cleaned and prepared for dissection. " In their sacs they ride as in their mother's womb, knee to chest, head pressed down, as if to die is merely to return to the flesh from which we were born, and this a second conception." Later I looked up the title. I wasn't exactly sure I understood what or who a resurrectionist is. According to the Wikipedia, a resurrectionist is a person who practises body snatching. Bodies are then sold for dissection or anatomy lessons in medical schools. This novel is not what I expected. Bradley's prose is still there and I still like it but I found his almost poetic writing at times being at odds ...

I had some cubes left over from a last year's project. I wanted to have different sizes of them but then decided against it. I ended up with seven cubes, hanging from the ceiling, with something looking like mediaeval manuscripts written all over them ( link ). This time I decided to do a three-dymensional polyptych in same colours I used on the two-dymentional one entitled In Your eyes, which is currently exhibited in Velenje. This is no joke, it's getting more complicated, each time I turn the cubes to continue the image. So why am I doing it? No one knows really. A little voice inside of my head sounds dangerously like JFK saying: "Not because it's easy but because it's hard!" The older I get, the more I like a good challenge. Od lanskega projekta za diplomsko nalogo je ostalo sedem kock s stranico 15 cm. Takrat sem razmišljala, da bi jih bilo štirinajst, sedem s stranico 10 cm in sedem večjih. Na koncu sem se odločila samo za manjše. Gre...

Velenje is a town with huge number of sunny days per year. I don't remember the number exactly, but it did surprise me when S told me about it. After one-hour drive beginning in Ljubljana fog, we emerged in sunny Velenje. It was a cold morning. There was nobody about except a small Citroen parked not far from Gorenje. There were three styrofoam snowmen at the entrance, kitschy advent decoration. Soon a decorating team arrives. They say they had nothing to do with the snowmen, when S asks who put them there. The exhibition hall is empty, silent.  There's not much to do. Soon the paintings are hanged and they seem like they hover against the walls. There's an eight part polyptych called In Your Eyes. It is somehow mysterious, it still makes me wonder about things it hides. I decided to accompany the polyptich with four larger red paintings, totally different, even though they share similar subject matter. There's nothing mysterious about them, I'm clear with wh...

Saint Zita is the patron saint of maids and domestic servants. Main characters of this book are servants living with their masters in Hexam Place, a posh London street. They take care of their masters, their children, cars, gardens, cleaning their houses and meeting in a local pub in their spare time.  I didn't care much for any of the characters, which doesn't mean they are badly developed. Far from it. A week after finishing a novel I still think about them. Maybe there's a concept of a servant I can't fathom, since I most certainly wouldn't make a good servant if I try to put myself in this role. There's Montserrat, a lazy au pair. Her sole job is to admit Mrs Still's lover into the house and let him out again. Later, when "the accident happens" she presses Mr Still into hiding the body against his will. There's something callous about her I just didn't like. Rabia takes care of Still's children. She's a strict Muslim, ...

I 've never taken part in a reading challenge before. When I stumbled upon What's In a Name, I decided to give it a try. Here it goes:   The basics The challenge runs from January to December. During this time you choose a book to read from each of the following categories (examples of books you could choose are in brackets – I’ve included some from other languages, and translations most definitely count!): A country (try not to use ‘Africa’!) Suggestions: Daphne Du Maurier’s Jamaica Inn, Xiaolu Guo’s I Am China, Martin Wagner’s Deutschland) An item of clothing (Su Dharmapala’s Saree, Ann Brashare’s The Sisterhood Of The Traveling Pants, Javier Moro’s El Sari Rojo; Pierre Lemaitre’s Vestido De Novia) An item of furniture (Marghanita Laski’s The Victorian Chaise-Longue; C S Lewis’s The Silver Chair; Goslash;hril Gabrielsen’s The Looking-Glass Sisters) A profession (Adriana Trigiani’s The Shoemaker’s Wife; Mikhail Elizarov’s The Librarian) A month of the year (El...

I like college exhibitions because of diversity of exhibited paintings and sparkles in students' eyes. And the way the professor said: "We are proud of you and you should be proud of yourselves," when he spoke about the progress in the college studio. The paintings on display represent insights into school's work and more than hints to the freedom it lets us keep and the importance of a right mixture of knowledge and gut feeling. And above all the courage to follow that gut feeling, no matter how otherworldly it may seem. That's why the work of each student seems like a world of their own. If calligraphy works for you, if it provides answers to questions you keep asking yourself, so be it. Tramontana, Diablo and me Všeč so mi šolske razstave. Predvsem zaradi raznolikosti razstavljenih del in leska v očeh študentov. Tokrat mi je bila še posebej všeč izjava predavatelja, ki vodi ateljejsko delo: "Ponosni smo na vas. Tudi vi bi morali biti ponosni n...

Diablo is a hot, dry offshore wind in the San Francisco Bay Area. It blows during the spring and fall.  Diablo je vroč in suh veter, ki spomladi in jeseni piha z obale v zalivu San Francisca.

A painting I did a couple of months ago was chosen for an exhibition. It would be nice to have another one he said when we spoke on the phone. So I need a hot wind to pair it with Tramontana. I come up with Levante and Diablo. I like Levante but the problem is it is warm, not hot. I need a hot wind, worthy of medium and dark cadmium reds.  Later in the day M and I are on the bypass stuck in relatively heavy traffic driving at 50 km/h. There is a huge black BMW with Russian licence plates in front of us. What do you think, I say, Levante or Diablo. Diablo, M says without thinking. The Russian takes the same exit we do. The setting sun resembles a coast of red sand and fiery orange water moving sluggishly. Tramontana, acrylic on canvas / akril na platnu, 70 × 70 cm Slika, ki sem jo pred nekaj meseci naslikala, je bila izbrana za razstavo. Dobro bi bilo imeti še eno, reče, ko se pogovarjava po telefonu. Dobro, si mislim, potem potrebujem vroč veter, nasprotje Tramon...

I've decided on the ropes, diamonds just wouldn't work and are not particularly interesting. I've never done ropes before. Ordinary hemp rope. At first I was a bit overawed by the work I recieved. Like being affraid of doing anything, of ruining it. However, I kept repeating "do whatever your gut feeling tels you to do" over and over in my head. By the time I went to it with acrylics, I was completely cool with it. Then I sat in front of the painting for a wile, letting it scream at me with yellows, oranges and reds. What now? Whatever I wanted to do wouldn't work now, because the shape of letter formation was slightly different. Than I remembered what fascinates me in unexpected and quirky stories I liked to read since forever. Just take a perfectly normal part of a painting and rearange it the "wrong" way. Insert it the wrong way. Rombe sem uporabila že velikokrat in se mi ne zdijo več pretirano zanimivi. Navadna špaga se mi je...

Ropes or diamonds? What's it gonna be? Vrvi ali rombi?

Ne vem kaj je z mano in beneškim Bienalom, ampak letos je, tako kot pred dvema letoma, deževalo. Nekaj dni prej sem na glas razmišljala, da bi rada doživela poplavljene Benetke. Dan pred odhodom pa nam je Šola poslala obvestilo, da se pričakuje dvig vode in da naj se primerno obujemo. Poletna obutev torej ne pride v poštev, je bilo dopisano. Na koncu nisem doživela poplave, saj se morje dvigne le v starem mestnem jedru, na Markovem trgu in še posebej okoli cerkve svetega Marka, ki je najnižja točka Benetk. Nisem preverila kako je z vodo, raje sem se ukvarjala s svetovnimi prihodnostmi. Okwui Enwezor si je letošnji bienale zamislil pod naslovom Vse prihodnosti sveta, vendar to ni enotna tema,  pod katero naj umetniki umestijo svoje prispevke. Vse prihodnosti sveta naj bi razumeli kot prepletajoče se filtre, ki prekrivajo drug drugega. Kustos se je osredotočil na pretrese, ki po stoti obletnici začetka prve svetovne vojne in sedemdeseti obletnici konca druge, preplavljajo sve...