Leaf Art by Marija Micic

Painting miniatures, as a complement to the text or as visual interpretation, can be traced back thousands of years and reaches to the ancient, Egyptian papyrus. In the late Middle Ages was beginning to emerge and miniatures in terms of small, figural compositions and portraits, which are already fully independent of the verbal content. Painted on various surfaces – paper, silk, precious metals or wood – in any case have been a painter necessarily require calligraphic skills, a keen eye and endless patience.

At some point, around the artist stopped over on the windblown leaves, unusually fragile and vulnerable, and yet so beautiful in her golden-brownish colors, unique shapes and unusual textures. By itself, imposed a thought to those dried-out leaves of autumn could breathe new life that, perhaps, one such sheet, covered with a network of lines and colors, could be transformed into artistic thumbnail … It was inevitable that experiment with new materials also means adventure with an uncertain ending: whether a dried leaf, which so resembles parchment, will be able to receive any color, as it will be stable, will cause cracking, crumbling and lightweight, but quite some power, any images , any substrate on which it is made? Patiently, with great caution, prepared the surface, revealing the way to this or that colored pigment remains on the leaf .. and then, after numerous attempts, at this wondrous medium started to emerge fragments of Marija's world – from dear ones, morning coffee , music, fashion, love to the fairy-tale scenes from the Russian ‘fable’, starry sky, embers – birds, fantastic buildings, but also the inevitable feelings of loneliness or movements ”in another direction”. Biting, sonorous colors with clear, black outlines, the absence of traditional perspective and space organized ‘overlapping’ form, it connects these miniatures with "Pre-Raphaelite” and medieval stained glass, but also with fauvistic ideas on freedom of line and color, while we directness of expression and sometimes deliberately distorted drawing (true, to some extent conditioned by the substrate) approach to freshness and sincerity once highly acclaimed and is now considerably (unjustly) forgotten magicians naive.