Oliver Pavic
Oliver was an architect before taking up the art of oil painting. As an architect, he studied forms and compositions and how they interact in an environment. He tried to present his architectural projects with more artistic mediums such as photography, installations and music. When that wasn't enough, Oliver looked to painting to really express himself.
For him, painting was just a hobby, a way of complementing his architectural creativity. He began to study people and how they interact with architecture, and how urban landscapes integrate with people. The two worlds, painting and architecture, were presented to him as non-homogeneous, yet he saw them as very similar. Architectural materials, shadows and perspectives began to merge with oil colors, canvases and artistic intrigue.
Oliver started painting seriously in 2015 and since then has been learning the art of painting, exploring different techniques and subjects, but most importantly, he has learned to express himself through his art. He has learned to fuse his styles and techniques to create an original work of art. Elements of classical portraiture were fused with architectural lines to reveal a manipulated expressive portrait. A technical approach to painting enabled him to blur the boundaries between classical and contemporary, fine art and abstract.
Oliver's unique style has been described as something between abstract and representational, inevitably addressing the viewer. He realized that a painting is not just what it plays on the canvas, but what it reveals in the viewer's mind. He says: "Show them everything and you reduce them to passive consumers, but to allow them to discover for themselves is to make them active participants."
Oliver's original painting technique is a mix of controlled architectural lines working with (and sometimes against) the organic "brush", only that in his case brushes have been exchanged with palette knives, spatulas and toothed scrapers.
This technique involves staging and layering just the right amount of oil paint and tones of different colors, which are then manipulated "alla prima" into a portrait. This approach is a matter of timing and envisioning the outcome, but the final result remains unknown until he has completed the final stage of painting; revelation, using tooth scrapers.
Introducing hands into the composition adds another dimension to his portraits. They become a kind of 3D object, expressing the emotions of the person in the portrait. The hands become a focal point of the painting, and are the most exposed part of the canvas.
The portrait experience, with its fine vertical and horizontal lines, is influenced by the angle and distance of the viewer's point of view and the direction and quality of the light. It becomes a dynamic rather than a static work of art.
By partially revealing the canvas and sketch lines of the painting, Oliver can then expose these subjects in an intimate laced version of themselves or preserve their intimacy behind a veil of sorts. By using charcoal to counterbalance the oils, he has managed to find a unique painting approach perfectly suited to who Oliver wants to be as an artist.
The artist's works
