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All of my life, I was surrounded by art and artists,
including my own family, but I didn't recognise this, or know and understand
much. Instead, I floated in that world of art, catching glimpses of artwork
that stayed imprinted in my memory, learning by heart about artists and their
work, but I myself never hoped or even knew that I was capable of producing
art, let alone that one day I would be a painter, even an artist, too. I was introduced to arts and consciously started taking
interest in it when I first arrived in Germany, in July 1999. I was fortunate
to have lived in a house filled with various arts and handcrafts, from
watercolours, oil paintings, to batik and silk paintings. At first, I was
attracted to the art of Chinese and Japanese calligraphy, drawing/writing/painting characters
on various papers. (read
more about traditional Japanese calligraphy) I experimented with paper crafts,
trying to combine calligraphy and various natural fibre papers. I also started
to study Japanese and Chinese characters, the language and pictograms, but I
fear I only scratched the surface of it all. That period resulted in my love of
both Chinese and Japanese calligraphy and self-making of silk painting greeting
cards and passepartouts for my paintings. (see Calligraphy
and Cards) Then, while a dear friend of mine was pregnant, she
painted a lovely silk painting of sea underworld and gave it to me at
Christmas. (Jackie's painting) I was
so taken that I asked her to teach me this technique, which she did, and that
is how my silk painting began. My early works were simple in its subject and technique,
one of an iris (I can still point out exactly where I made mistakes!), and the
second one of a peony in red. The second painting was a much better attempt and
was then given to my friend upon the birth of her daughter. In the meantime, I started working on my first aquatic
painting, which was a huge project for me, not only because of the size of the
painting, but also the intricate details of sea underworld creatures and
plants. I count this painting into my early works, for at that stage I had not
quite mastered that free flow of paints on silk. This painting is now in a
private collection in Croatia. (Aquatic 1) The year 2000 was my most productive year in the artistic
sense. Besides painting, I participated and helped in a school project,
teaching children how to paint on silk. Throughout the summer of 2000, I
painted a lot and accumulated lots of artwork. That is when the first idea of
an exposure of my work came about. This was also the time when, for various
reasons, I thought of having an artistic pseudonym. After many suggestions, it
was finally my husband who came up with Indigo Summer, and it is perfect
because the initials IS correspond to my real name initials. These are also
initials I used on all of my work prior to coming up with an alias. My first "exhibition" was in September 2000,
during a street festival. It was a cold and very windy day, and with a big help
from my friends, I braved the weather, curious looks and bargain hunters. I
sold lots of my work on that occasion, and the proceedings went to buying more
silk and paints, and other equipment. (photos) This success was followed by participation at a school
Christmas bazaar, for which I painted and made Christmas cards. I repeated this
enjoyable experience at Christmas 2001 bazaar. (photos) In 2001, negotiations were underway to organise an
exhibition at the Malkasten Gallery, but this never materialised because sadly
and unexpectedly the gallery closed down . Lots of my work was given away as presents and I have no
record of them (except in my deceitful memory). In my painting, I had a go at
various motives and techniques, abstract and defined by contours, and have
mainly by now formed my style. I like using contour paint but with overflowing
silk paints, so there is a form and shape and yet the colours are free-flowing.
(see example) This, however, does not apply to
calligraphy, where I use only black (or red) contour paint to both outline and
paint the characters (or other elements). (see example) I married in 2001, surprisingly into
quite an artistic family. Margot is a
graduated artist of modern and avant-garde art, producing lovely modern
pottery, paintings, compositions etc. Jesse is a renowned modern art painter, a graduate of the Royal Academy of Arts
(Jesse), living and working in Cornwall.
I am married to a British journalist, have
two children, and
currently live in Germany, near Cologne. We moved around Germany couple of times
so, while we lived in Frankfurt, I was an artist member of the Frankfurt Art Society (Frankfurter Kunstverein),
from 2003 to 2005. I intend to apply for membership with The Guild of Silk
Painters in the UK. Majority of my work can be found in Germany, UK, Ireland,
Croatia, France and the US. Although my artwork and work on this site is somewhat
slow due to the joys and trials of family life, I have many plans for this
site and for my painting such as setting up other exhibitions and continue
organising creative workshops.
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