“What I create is the outer symbol of my inner language…”
Paul Zimmerman in conversation with Goran Makeski
Paul Zimmerman: How did you get interested in art?
Goran Makeski: Since my earliest childhood I have been artistically accompanied by my father,
who was an academic artist.
His landscape motifs and the beautiful flower arrangements that he painted have always impressed, inspired and shaped me.
My passionate love for painting has remained unbroken.
PZ: What is the most challenging aspect of your work?
GM: After my Dad has passed away, the biggest challenge for me, was undoubtedly getting rid of the thoughts to paint like him.
I wanted to create something new and put my own stamp on the art scene.
With passion and persistence it took me about three years to crystallize out the painting process in my own art style which is recognizable as Makeski Art.
PZ: What is your artistic process? How do you create your painting?
GM: Over time I learned to wait for my inner, very strong painterly impulse.
It is like a spring that begins to gush more and more.
At the beginning I create the picture purely intuitively, usually something more concrete emerges during the work.
I mix the colors directly on the painting medium – there is never a previous sketch.
There are many emotions in my works of art, so that all of my works of art have their own name and meaning.
My works of art arise from many different forms of expression and the pictures are a mirror of my emotional experiences and my mood at the moment of artistic creation.
When I do such intuitive painting, I experience a kind of encounter with myself and many pictures arise out of this emotion.
What I create is the outer symbol of my inner language.
Typical are the faces that appear during the painting process and sometimes merge into each other.
PZ: Do you have any particular goal in mind when your start a new piece?
GM: A certain topic has to grasp my being, it grows and matures in me until I feel a kind of urge
from then on everything has to be picturesque materialize.
Back when the world issue was “the Refugees”, I kept hearing and seeing refugees in the media. The result at the time was very intensive work.
There were a lot of emotions and I was painting and painting …
The same thing was in the USA elections, the topic that preoccupied me.
PZ: How do you know when the painting is finished?
GM: The completion of the artwork is always subjective-of course, but I will express myself as follows:
The eyes still want to paint, but when intuition takes over the role of conductor, the orchestra knows when “Concerto grosso” ends.
PZ: Has your practice changed over time?
GM: Since young years I practiced drawing with pencil and ink.
I painted spontaneously, mostly on site, landscape motifs.
As mentioned earlier, I was looking for something new.
Over time, I’ve experimented with different materials and suddenly discovered that photo paper offers a lot,
but it does not allow all types of color to adhere to it.
So, I created my own color mixes from different color types.
Since then I have been painting on photo paper.
For the light-sensitive coating of the photo paper, I use the finest acrylic ink, which is erasable and waterproof.
Some of the colors are my own creation, more precisely a mixture of different color components and ink.
Over time I noticed that the liquid colors get the greatest luminosity on this painting medium.
PZ: Which artists are you most influenced by?
GM: More of them, but the most are Salvador Dali, Paul Klee, Picasso, Odilon Redon, Claude Monet
PZ: How would you define yourself as an artist?
GM: I classify my art style in intuitive art painting. it is a creative process where I encounter the inner child with all its facets: energetic and innocent, but at the same time honest and with the depth of lifelong experiences.
PZ: What are you working on now?
GM: I paint the “urban life” phase, which has been going on for a year, resulting in a huge series with
the title »The Longing for Sociability«.
PZ: How does the pandemic influence your work and sensibility?
GM: A brief summary of my artistic work since the beginning of the pandemic:
I belong to the risk group.
State of emergency – especially for the psyche.
View from the balcony … Total peace out there just the wonderful twittering of birds.
Thoughts buzz in my head.
I start painting:
and whenever I practice the intuitive art it happens – like now –
the encounter with myself – moved by the events surrounding the virus.
Incredible, unbelievable and untrue the whole situation
And like a broken record, it is repeated over and over again in all media
SOCIAL DISTANCE
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