Synkroniciti is delighted to welcome back visual artist Darija Stipanić of Croatia with three fascinating mixed media artworks exploring geometrical abstraction and patterns. The blocks of color in these works are also highly textured, adding additional variation and movement.
For my paintings and drawings I use mixed technique. Paintings are usually on canvas or on some type of wooden blackboard. They have strong texture, made with a layers of color (acrylic paint) and also with use of different materials (paper, fabric, sand, silicone and wood sawdust, what ever drops into my mind…)
Siva priča 1 (Gray story 1) combines deconstruction with reconstruction. Darija cut pieces of earlier prints into rectangles and glued them to canvas, giving them new purpose and creating contrast within a repetitive pattern. At first glance it seems restrained, but closer inspection reveals tiny bursts of color and black and white marks across each neutral block of color. It’s playful on a minimalist level.
Nedostupan (Unavailable) is a large grey square inhabited by sixteen small squares, thirteen white and three blue. The texturing is heavy and there are some recognizable marks (@, gg). The blue squares are isolated and neutralized by the grey background and white neighbors. This piece comments on the inertia of bureaucracy, which keeps things from coming together.
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Terracolor is inspired by the colors of the soil of the Istrian Peninsula, which lies in Croatia and Slovenia, east of the Gulf of Venice. A stripe of snow white and a stripe of bright red lie on either side of a mild grey, representing the stunning white beaches, the fiery red soil that is so well suited to growing olives and figs, and the grey soil, known as flysch, a limestone clay that grows white grapes for wine. The observant eye will note the interplay between red and grey, creating orange fingers that reach into the grey block. On a minimalist level, this is sensual. Again the textures are visible and create variation and play. What we perceive as three fields of solid color are in reality full of variation.
Darija invites us to slow down and think about color and texture, how it unifies and differentiates things that lie around us. View her exquisite art in Synkroniciti’s “Patterns” issue, available here: https://synkroniciti.com/the-magazine/purchase-individual-issues/.
Darija Stipanić, nee Brajan, was born in Rijeka, Croatia in 1973. She graduated from the interdisciplinary study of Fine Art and Art History at the Teacher Training Faculty of the University of Rijeka in 1997. She has been the subject of several solo exhibitions and participated in group art exhibitions in Croatia and foreign countries, receiving several awards. She is a member of the Croatian visual art society in Rijeka. She is a sculptor, but also paints, draws, and occasionally prints. She enjoys making art with practical application (applied art). Most of her work is abstract, inspired by largely by nature, but also music, literature, thought and emotion.