The Riverbank Painting

Pratneker (1973) was born in Maribor, Slovenia, where he currently lives and works. In 2006, he graduated with the thesis on Maribor city landscapes throught history, including his own series of cityscapes. Soon after this, he also started to paint landscape motifs plein air or in the studio. In 2012, he received an MA at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Ljubljana. He participates in numerous group and solo exhibitions at home and abroad. In October 2014, 2017, 2018 and 2019 he participated with his paintings in the legendary annual juried art exhibitions, Autumn Salon, Paris, France. In February 2015, 2018, 2019 and 2020 he participated with paintings in the other very important legendary annual juried art exhibitions Salon of the French artist in Grand palace, Paris, France. In 2020 he got the award »Mention«. In December 2018 and 2019 he participated in Salon Beaux Art in Louvre. In 2019 he got the "Prix Eugène Boudin" for landscape painting. My paintings are landscapes that twist and turn and are tossed about and split apart. Sometimes they merge into the sky or water, or disappear off the edge of a cliff. Flooding is a regular occurrence. I view the painting process as a portal to my interior life and responses to environmental and global events; it has evolved out of a deep fascination with the metaphor of landscape and the expressive possibilities of oil paint. In moving paint over and around a surface, weather and geological processes become agents of change, acting on landforms that are repositories of memory and accumulated experience. I meander through a landscape versus describing it, and capture not a moment but a process – forms, elements and events, moving and changing over time.