A careful and quiet observer of the world: Mirko Dragović

To be an artist, to be a pedagogue, first and above all to be a man - is the mission of Mirko Dragović from Podgorica, to which he has been dedicated for more than a decade in his workplace at the Resource Center for children with intellectual disabilities and autism.

This thirty-seven-year-old academic artist is recognized not only for his paintings but also as a dedicated art pedagogue of the Podgorica Resource Center, and the way he approaches his students and his work is best evidenced by the respect with which the parents of these children approach him. After graduating from the Academy in Trebinje, at the very beginning of his career, he thought of being a "complete artist", but for "Vijesti" he talked about going into pedagogy, because "life imposes that".

"I started working at the Resource Center, I fell in love with that job and that population of students, because they are honest and good souls. Working with them gives a person some extra strength and will, in that population I came across many talents and something that inspires me, in a way I am also inspired by their works, above all their sincerity. Many academic artists would envy them for the sincerity and certain quality of their works", this modest young artist tells "Vijesta".

He presented his works to fans of fine art recently in Bar, with the fifth solo exhibition "Memories" in the "Velimir A. Leković" gallery, where he exhibited 37 of his works created in the past few years.

"The pictures are abstract, I hope that I am recognizable by the way I paint. I don't get into manners, I like to change images, motifs. I moved from landscape to abstraction, I like warm colors, I like to draw on pictures. I go my own way a lot, when I do some motif, I don't like to paint the same thing, sometimes I think that I shouldn't copy myself. I also try to make abstract paintings different", says the interlocutor of "Vijesti".

As a careful and quiet observer of the world around him, Dragović expresses his deepest feelings and great love for the people and things that surround him in his works, and the pictures from his beautiful and carefree childhood are his inexhaustible inspiration. The difficult period of his life that he left behind after three or four years was also inspiring, during which time he made "quite a lot of pictures, I got a little more courage to exhibit them now".

"The exhibition is called 'Memories', which are difficult for me, but I still hope that these works will convey something beautiful to the art audience. I am an optimist by nature, I believe that with love everything can be overcome, and even those memories that are difficult can be turned into something that is inevitable and that has made us at least better people, or, in my case, a better artist because I am more the radio. I am currently painting larger formats and I also hope that this bar exhibition will encourage me and give me the strength and will to create even more and better", adds Dragović.

Dragović's valer is emblematic - he uses a lot of warm colors, especially in the last series of paintings, he jokingly says that his little sister describes them with the words that "uncle paints like a girl".

"It wasn't characteristic of me before, but now I use that warmer color. Some pictures look disharmonious, but I like to control the picture, that's why I worked in smaller formats, in the initial phase I let the picture go when it arises spontaneously, but spontaneous control is the power and skill of the artist to control the picture and color. Compositionally, you have to start from the starting point, I like the landscape and my painting in the initial stage draws on the landscape, at the beginning there are some contours and valer of the landscape, such that in a way I could leave the images at that stage, but, later decomposing them, I arrive at of turning them into abstraction", concluded the interview for "Vijesti" Dragović.

He exhibited collectively in the country and abroad

Dragović was born in 1980 in Priboj, graduated from the "Petar Lubarda" High School of Fine Arts in Cetinje in 1999, and in 2004 from the Academy of Fine Arts in Trebinje, majoring in painting, in the class of Professor Marko Musović. In the same year, he became a member

Association of fine artists of Montenegro. He exhibited collectively several times in the country and abroad, and independently before the Bar in Tivat, Trebinje, Kotor and in Switzerland.

Each of our days is a contract with some future memories

"Each of our days is a contract with some future memories. You should, but who will take care of all this, exercise your eye for the hidden meanings of things. This is precisely what Dragović does on his canvases, like a tightrope walker, between the past and the future. He knows that vision registers, states and seduces, but vision does not interpret. Language cannot be grasped with the naked eye, but it can be transformed into shape and color, into a network of other and different communication," said art and literary critic Milun Lutovac, M.Sc., about Dragović's paintings.

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