Rebirth Print

My name is Nikola Durdevic and I am fine art painter. I live in Zagreb, capital of Croatia (Europe). My painting emerges from an inner space — a zone where memory, emotion, and archetypal imagery overlap. I do not begin with a motif, but with a state of being. For me, a painting is not a representation of the external world, but a trace of an inner process — a record of a moment where the conscious and the unconscious meet. I work at the threshold between abstraction and figuration. The figure in my work often appears fragmented, as a trace or an echo, never as a fixed identity. It functions as a psychological or spiritual force rather than a portrait. The body becomes a sign, not an object; the face a field of tension, not description. The painting process is intuitive, gestural, and physical. Gesture, layering, accident, and control coexist. I am not interested in closing meaning, but in opening it — allowing space for the viewer to recognize their own inner states, transitions, and fractures within the image. Thematically, my work explores identity, time, transformation, and the invisible forces shaping human experience. I am drawn to liminal states — between dream and waking, presence and disappearance, matter and the unseen. Painting, for me, is a meeting place — between artist and viewer, and between different layers of reality.