In 1995, after finishing my studies at the ArtAcademy in Perugia, Italy and Belgrade University Academy of Applied Arts and Design in Serbia, I started working as a textile designer in a rug factory. My first job proved to be a challenging one. Blueprints of my design were too complex for workers in charge of the production. It was easier to create monochrome carpets than it was applying different colors and shapes that were essential part of my designs. While I did not stay long at my first job, I continued transforming my design and ideas into the rug like format. This type of applied art brings out fun in me, and my love for carpet design has remained present to this day.
Working my way through the world of applied arts, I started painting on objects. Most of them for home purpose, like old furniture, but as life would have it, my first big public breakthrough was to sell furniture to a well known restaurant in Belgrade that ordered, and displayed my hand painted stools. As guests and patrons started buying them one by one, I continued creating them. While my primary practice was painting, I found it fascinating to apply my colors and shapes to objects that are being used in every day life. I was really getting into applied arts, and looking back I realized that this was the beginning of a new phase for me; my very own style of art expressionism.
Right around that time, one of my catalogs was seen by a Serbian, and a world renowned film director Emir Kusturica who offered me a job on his new project-sight. And a sight it was. In 2004, I moved to Mecavnik in Mokra Gora, where he had built a whole city out of lumber. Part of the national park under government protection, this city looked like it was cut out of a fairytale. I lived and worked in an enchanted world, where all my art came to life in a form of an armoire, a chair, a bed frame; walls and walls of space for me to express myself. After my five year city-wide art project has run out of space for me to paint, I started creating souvenirs. Like everything else coming from the wooden-city these souvenirs were unique. I used the similar motif of couples in love, smiling, happy, with cars, trains and houses with crocked roofs behind them.
For me art cannot be satisfying to the soul unless it brings out a smile or creates a feeling of happiness and calm within the spectator. I try to put the most desired feelings into all my art. Every year I try to exhibit some of my work. In the past couple of years I have concentrated on large peaces of canvas.
Ana Petrovic Siljkovic