Haidi Božiković

Lives and works in Podstrana / Split, Croatia

Artist statement

A new painting usually begins without a fixed idea of what it will eventually look like. Working intuitively with colour, movement, and what emerges through the process, I allow the work to change as it develops. Through contrasts, gestures, and shifts between density and openness, I search for a balance between structure and spontaneous energy. I build and disrupt the surface using different tools and varying densities of paint, moving between opaque and diluted layers, broad gestures and smaller marks, while allowing traces of earlier stages to remain visible. Some paintings come together quickly, while others undergo repeated transformations before I feel they are complete. "Dah" (Breath) is my first series. Through abstraction, I explore feelings and inner states that are sometimes difficult to put into words — fear, pain, struggle, anticipation, release, and the experience of confronting the unknown. Rather than illustrating these states directly, I allow them to emerge through colour, movement, tension, and the relationships between forms. I choose titles only after a painting is finished, based on what I recognise in it. They reflect my own experience of the work while leaving space for viewers to form their own interpretations.

Artwork