Kristijan Mitrovic

@kmitrovicart

Disciplines

CollagePaintingFine ArtShow 2 Disciplines

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About

Zdravo! I am originally from Serbia, where I started painting and drawing like a lot of my family. After some art instruction classes, I started doing my own paintings and drawings, as well as crafting items for the Christmas season. After moving to DFW in 2019, I started focusing more on my art and trying new mediums and playing with the different ideas that pop-up in my head. Now living in Arkansas, I have found a job I love as a floral designer, which inspired my recent works. In the last few years, I have fallen in love with creating mixed-media pieces using flower petals, leaves, and sometimes berries. Most of my pieces are on vintage scrapbook paper, where you can see the leftovers of the items that I cleaned off the pages. Then I add details with paint, colored pencil, and even pollen. I’ve been inspired by the flowers I work with as a floral designer to use the flowers’ beautiful colors to create a sense of nostalgia and memories of our past. Flowers are part of our lives at different times, and these pieces are a reminder of the memories and experiences we have all shared. In addition to my art and prints, I also handcraft greeting cards from the vintage scrapbook paper and items found inside. Some of the cards are collaged images, simple presents, and a variety of other styles. Occasionally, I will still do standard pieces using acrylic paint or in pencil. My art instructor always tried to encourage me to experiment with larger strokes, but my painting usually end up with smaller strokes and detailing. Maybe that's why I like pencil drawing so much! And finally, I love to honor my Orthodox Christian faith in the Springtime by painting Easter eggs with small designs. Then after we eat them, I save the shell pieces and turn them into small mosaics, perfect for Spring decor or your year-round art collection.

Artist Statement

After moving to Arkansas and becoming a floral designer, I started to see how important flowers are to our lives and the memories that we make. Flowers and memories go hand-in-hand, reminding us of good times, bad times, our loved ones and our memories of them. Most of my works use vintage scrapbook paper from the early-to-mid 1900s, with flowers, leaves, berries, and even pollen being the primary focus. Additional details are added with paint and colored pencil. And while I still enjoy the standard mediums of painting and drawing, this combining of vintage paper and beautiful florals has inspired so many ideas that it's taken over my works for now. The old paper represents memories that we keep and cherish, while the florals elicit our memories and are a connection to the beauty of nature. Their scents often trigger those memories and emotions, like roses from your grandmother’s garden. By painting with flower petals on vintage scrapbook paper, I hope to also invoke those emotions and memories. Flower petals, ivy leaves, berries, and stems are set into the paper to create floral patterns, vases, or wildflower scenes. They may be strategically placed to create patterns of petals and leave; or spaced about to form flower stems placed in a vase or growing from the grass. Pollen from lilies, watered-down acrylics, and colored pencil round out the pieces, providing detailing like stems, leaves, or outlines for florals and items. Memories make us who we are, and I hope that my works can help remind people of simpler time, loved ones, or experiences they’ve since forgotten. Flowers remain in the background of many memories, so my work brings them to the front as a reminder to hold onto those memories and cherish them, while enjoying life and continuing to make new ones.