Immersed in Color and Botany-The work of Sretan Bor
Contemporary painter Sretan Bor’s work is distinguished by bright geometry and imaginative patterning and a way of immersing the viewer into botanical worlds.
The artist is from Osijek, Croatia and works today in Belgrade, Serbia. From the time he was a child he liked to draw, and recalls a fascination with an old children’s encyclopedia. Today, the artist begins with a small sketchbook, a repository for ideas, and developing projects whether personal or site specific. Sretan typically will make drawings on paper but he also creates digital sketches as well, all of the mural work is hand painted, a time-consuming and complex process, the scale allowing the artist to become lost in surface as well as fully enveloped in the world he creates.
The drawing work has a flatness and puzzle like aesthetic, marked by an idiosyncratic sensibility, set against bareness….what seems straightforwardly delightful graphic is in fact often more enigmatic at further examination, leaving one wondering how spareness becomes fullness…
There is a flourishing in the simplicity of Sretan’s drawings, the bright color and abstracted shapes giving impressionistic feeling while as well appearing to be thoroughly contemporary.
While much of his work is focused on a schematic color and shape patterning, there is also a particular place -the jungle room – that exceeds such distillation and seems to foray into a realm of dense forest, replete with living breathing creatures and plants. The jungle room has three painted walls and a fourth wall of windows that looks out into a small garden.
The jungle is the most complex project so far. I spent around two weeks finishing the sketch for the client and then forty days painting it on location. It has more than 30 colors, and who knows how many plants, flowers, and birds. The idea was to paint a jungle with a little creek that surrounds the room so that you would get a feeling that the room is some sort of small island inside the jungle. On the smaller wall, there is a boulder from which a small waterfall comes down and a creek goes on the left and on the right (on both long walls of the room). The jungle is full of red flowers and blue birds. There is no horizon behind the jungle, it is instead covered in different bushes and trees – so, together with the rock, it gives you a feeling that you are in some kind of warm jungle hug.
Learn more about the artist Sretan Bor at cargocollective.com/sretanbor
Link to Rosa’s original article here.
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