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1. Evening of art – feet painting workshop at the Sopot Kindergarten in Zagreb

After a long time, I was again invited to the Kindergarten in Sopot to present my way of painting to children and parents thus participating in an art evening.

Using my feet playing when I was a child is actually what I still do today, I play with my feet while painting and I try to somehow keep the free, spontaneous, childlike even today in developing new ideas for paintings. Now I can truly identify with that driving idea by painting with children in their everyday environment. I came to the children as a guest and lowered my feet into the freedom of creativity of children whose horizons have no limits.

I painted a half-finished work with them and during the duration of the workshop, I almost finished the painting. At the same time, the children painted with their feet around me, they tried this way of painting, and they did not give up. Fifty of them really wanted to paint by holding a brush between their toes, and they really had no problem getting used to the dimension of using their feet instead of their hands as if they were doing it every day. Their energy that I felt is one big generator that pushes me forward and I felt like a part of their company, equal to them. Not that they are equal to me, but through their acceptance of foot painting, I initiated myself into their community as equal to them, one of them.

Grounded with small people of great creative reach, I went into that free creation where new ideas are lined up one after the other and I played in painting inspired by the freedom of the children who surrounded me.

2. Zagreb magnolias

While painting magnolias in full bloom on Zagreb’s Tomislavac, I let myself be guided by my impressions of that scene, which I have been following through the spring since my childhood until now when I am fifty years old. I collected them all in these two palettes that are next to me every day and started to paint an interpretation created from memories and the present moment. I often passed through that part of the city, mostly in a hurry, because the Central Station is there and there is a crowd of passengers and passers-by, and the park that spreads out there calms down all the hustle and bustle. There is a big contrast between the noisy area around the station where everyone is measuring time and rushing towards their destination and the quiet park where people are slowly walking or resting. I chose that oasis of peace and nature, because the colors of blooming magnolias are the source of freshness in my color palette. Staying focused on nature in an urban environment is a concentration exercise in order to depict the peaceful part of the park with the Art Pavilion that make up Lenuzzi’s green horseshoe. I try to stay out of the whirlwind of today’s busyness and ever-faster way of working in anything, including painting. My painting has never been fast, although I can be fast if needed, but this slower way of painting is the most honest painterly representation of who I am. The more I show myself with everything I am, and with my spasm in brushstrokes – the more complete I am as an artist who is constantly searching for what is unique to me in my work. Every part of my personality is a tool for painting, and just like that, with all its peculiarities, I paint the motif of the park as a symbol of peace and relaxation, necessary for all of us to pause for a while under the blossoming magnolias and gather strength for everything that awaits us. Towards Tomislavac with magnolias, I extend my brush as an antenna with which I hunt for color signals and transfer them to the canvas in the interpretation of what is seen in the newly created painting.

4. Freedom energy in monkey movement

Until now, I have never painted a motif of monkeys, although I have always been interested in observing them in their environment, in the high treetops where they deftly jump from branch to branch with their hands and feet ready to grab onto the next one. They move at a height unfathomable to our abilities, but inspiring to me for the emergence of new ideas for paintings and new solutions for the obstacles I find myself facing. Monkey dexterity is a guide to own solutions on the branches of physical limitations.

I held those branches between my big toe and second toe, painting a capuchin monkey in the treetop, and through brushstrokes with green paint, I climbed into its heights, studying which branch could support the weight of my body. That is why I painted slightly thicker branches, tougher, unbreakable like brush handles on which I held on with my toes and hung upside down in the shade of a high treetop with flashes of sunlight that blinds and burns, but in the shade, you are protected and illuminated by the greenery of paradise. Hanging from a brush handle, painting a capuchin monkey and identifying with its freedom of movement is a springboard to the endless possibilities we have. I jumped into the distance and grabbed the next branch with my brushes and now I will jump even further, because the brushes hold me firmly.

The capuchin monkey is a symbol of human endless possibilities of work, pleasure in life and achievement of high goals for which one should use his spirit, thought and body to the utmost. I do it every day, do not be like fake tops, get your crown tops yourself, on your own way. Let us be people of high bright deeds, because they are the purpose of the existence of light, without light there is no shadow. We are a collection of everything in one and we cannot separate ourselves from the whole of life.

5. Art workshop Footprints of Art

I have been working with Erasmus Student Network Zagreb for about five years. This non-profit student organization for foreign students who stay in Zagreb in the Erasmus student exchange program organizes various social and cultural events for foreign students who study for several semesters in Zagreb. Through various events, they get to know the city of Zagreb and have the opportunity to learn about various socio-sociological differences as well as the inclusion in society of people with disabilities in the city of Zagreb.

Through art workshops in cooperation with the ESN organization I present my paintings to the public. I combined my painterly, artistic expression with what ‘adorns’ me, disability as a whole of identity which is shown on the painted surface as freedom of movement. Unexpected spastic movements are my most sincere brushstrokes and are excellent in the identity with which I present myself in paintings and in my daily passing through the streets and communication with the environment. So at the art workshops, with my facial grimaces, mumbling voice, wheelchair that I push with my feet and clenched hand movements, I actually paint the space I’m moving through. With my appearance, I paint around me and my entire environment is the surface that I paint, the image that is created in front of me by moving forward.

I am colorful in the colors of existence, they shine with an open embrace for everyone around me, because I paint what I am, exactly as I am. Looking at myself in the reflection of the environment, I emphasize the colors emerging from my palette, on which everyone around me is dipped and become part of the painting. All the people in my environment shine with the colors of the palette. The students in the Zrinjevac park were the colors on my palette and we all mixed together in the colors of the finished painting of the musicians. In the end, we became a collection of colors on the green grass of Zrinjevac park.

6. Inclusion of fiery creativity

Inclusion is my daily work in the studio, I paint in front of everyone honestly and without reservation, showing myself, everything I extract and spread. Difference in relation to the environment is a bonfire that ignites my creativity through a different perspective and gives me new freedom through painting.

Peeled from any norms of fashion and physical appearance, I paint my deep sincere moments of flames of creativity and I include them among people by exhibiting them together with myself.

We all sprouted from the same soil and on it we can, each in our own way, leaf out and let the fruits of our work grow that can be pleasant and useful to someone else.

A community of different people is the most beautiful bouquet of flowers and that is why I completely naturally joined the UPSET ART festival where I was part of that bouquet of inclusion and art.

I participated in the 6th UPSET ART festival of art and inclusion of people with disabilities that took place at the Trešnjevka Cultural Center in Zagreb. The festival was conceived as a point of connection for all people who want to express themselves artistically. There were exhibitions, handicrafts, jewelry, poetry, concerts, theatre performances and contemporary dance. I exhibited my works (mostly abstractions, acrylics on canvas) and at the same time, I painted a new painting, which aroused great interest from the audience. I also received great satisfaction and inspiration in painting from the concert of my wife Kristina Šubašić, who sang jazz standards accompanied by pianist Leandro Havliček. Our joint program was very interesting to the visitors.

7. Traces left for the eyes yearning for colour

Searching through my own space of intuitive sources of inspiration in painting, I leave behind traces of paintings for their observers as seekers of their own impressions. I am oriented on the horizon and keep my course towards newly discovered surfaces of colour on which I step with a brush between my toes like the rudder of a ship made of a palette. Across continents and oceans of colored surfaces, I reach for the world created from what has passed through my senses, digesting the absorbed pulse through muscle spasms, squeezed out by my feet for the emergence of a new world that I am the first to step into, and I leave behind traces for all eyes that will set out into the world offered in the painting.

I do not want to lead followers, I only pave the path that I myself tread and whoever finds themselves on it will not get lost. On it, colours are like signposts to that point in us where we have grown into what we are. I invite observers as fellow travellers on the path of the world with colours squeezed out by my feet. I paint a path with no visible end with my feet. The end of one path is the end of one painting, and after that, I begin a new one as a continuation of the journey where the goal is not to reach the end, but rather for the painting journey to continue. For all fellow travellers, I leave a path along which they can travel in any desired direction.

The project lasted seven months as a presentation of my artistic work in the studio and outside it, in public. My way of painting, through art workshops and painting exhibitions alongside my daily painting work, is presented here as an artistic path and lifestyle. The exploration of personal spaces and the path that I create for myself are shown through this project. Part of that journey is in it and I will do my best to continue to realize this project of a painting trip.