Lily Prelevic

I was born and raised in Belgrade Serbia , home of a great realist painter Pavle Jovanovic (1859- 1957) who I think was under the great influence of famous artist John Singer Sargent.
The turmoil at the Balkans took my family away from my home country and we settled down in the Middle East for quite a while.
The first year when we came to Bahrain I was so lackey to meet fantastic ladies- Anna Watson and Lynne Al Wazzan who encourage me to pursued my art talent that was hidden deep down in my soul.

I have Bachelor degree in Law .

As a self thought artist for last 12 years , internet was my only teacher .Luckily my instinct took me into the right direction .I came across Florence Academy of art , then fantastic artists like John Howard Sanden, Daniel Gerhartz, David Gray, Scott Waddell, Mark Carter, Graydon Perish, David Jon Kassan , Casey Baugh, Cesar Santos ……and others .They were inspired with technique of living masters like Richard Schmid, Alan Kingwell, David Leffel - who were continuously spreading teaching and technique of amazing Da Vinci , Sargent , Bouguereau .
Oil was my medium of choice after few acrylic art work , which I did very successfully. I jumped into the deep water of skills and knowledge that I didn’t have, choose the most difficult subject to paint- portraits , the most difficult technique too.
Underpainting , dead layer , color layers with glazing .Great demanding challenge , great excitement, so many doubts , but I juggled art and family life quite well as my family was great support from the beginning .
Each painting took me 2-3 months to complete .Copying old masters was the best way to learn the craft .With each painting my skills became better and better but there is a long ro...