Today we’d like to introduce you to Miroslav Antic.
Hi Miroslav, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
I’ve been an artist pretty much all my life – even before I studied art, I was tirelessly trying to learn on my own, first from the comic book artists and a few grown-up professionals I encountered as a youngster, and later on, in afterschool art classes and finally at the Academy of Fine Arts in my hometown of Belgrade, Yugoslavia. After graduation and five glorious years of study, I emigrated to America. I’ve been here ever since, painting, exhibiting, and teaching art in several art colleges, notably the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. The story continues – as Winston Churchill, who was an amateur artist, once said: “Lucky are the painters, they will continue painting into the sunset”.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
I can’t say that I had any serious obstacles or challenges. I always felt happy and privileged that I was an artist, so everything went pretty smoothly.
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
Being an artist is a great privilege even if you have to, from time to time, give up on the so-called luxuries without which most of the population seem to be unable to do without. You simply have different priorities in life than most folks. Making paintings is not work for me at all. It is rather a continuous pleasurable adventure on which you expect to be surprised by your own discoveries. With glee in your heart, you ask yourself where did this come from? On the other hand, there is always a possibility that one whole day of working in the studio will turn into nothing at all, just a mess that you wipe off and throw away before you go home. It is this uncertainty that some people can’t handle. But, after a while, you realize it is precisely because you do not know the outcome of any painting that you are involved with the thing called ‘art’ – your profession is different from any other. You can be working 10-12 hours in the studio without ever being tired or bored. In a very real way, an artist’s work is always new and exciting because of the fact that art-making does not depend on what one has learned. Actually, you can’t stay too long with what you know well, you need to move on. It’s like you are always starting from the beginning in order to find out what else is there to be learned and discovered. Artists are constantly at the beginning of a new adventure, no matter how experienced and/or professionally successful they are.
Is there something surprising that you feel even people who know you might not know about?
Well, I often have a feeling that my friends who are not artists feel sympathy or even sorrow for me. The funny thing is that I feel a mixture of those two emotions for them as well. To each his own, I guess.
Contact Info:
- Website: miroslavanticartist.com (go to Contact)
Image Credits
1. Miroslav Antic, The Brief Age of Heroes, 2022, oil on canvas, 72″x 72″ 2. Miroslav Antic, The Buccaneers (Pan Am), 2020, oil on canvas, 84″x 60″ 3. Miroslav Antic, The Old Enemies of Peace, 2021, oil on canvas, 62″x 42″ 4. Miroslav Antic, Untitled (Roy & Trigger, to Juan Romero), 2021, 72″ x 72″ 5. Miroslav Antic, Canned Heat, 2021, oil on canvas, 84″ x 70″
