BO GRSKOVICH ARTIST STATEMENT

The love that I have for textured surfaces originates from my childhood. These memories from times past bring to mind the feel of old, time-eaten walls and sun-bleached cracked stone. Growing up on the beautiful rocky coast of the Adriatic Sea only intensified this love.

The old houses (very few are left in their original shape and size), with centuries-old foundations, would get new freshness with lime washes that sometimes had pale blue or green colour added. Our mother insisted that the most trafficked area, our kitchen, be lime-washed every couple of years at the least.

Despite the regime that ruled Croatia, we practiced our faith, worked and survived on the land inherited from our forefathers.

Incredibly vivid in my memory are summer times when dark clouds would carry thunderstorms and hail, destroying the crops necessary to survive the winter. What I used to look upon as an unbearable hardship and misfortune, today, I remember with gratitude. Never would I have known what it meant to depend on God’s mercy and provision without that hardship. 

I can still hear the bells of the heart of our community, our parish, the Church of St. Jerome, at the breaking of day, midday, dusk, Sundays, all the essential Feast Days and life happenings. My childhood experience and memories are one significant wholeness where faith, life and nature intertwine.

 

- BOZICA GRSKOVIC

“An astonishing and absolute feeling for expressing fluidity of thoughts on canvas."

"Figures and silhouettes are telling a story and letting a viewer read through body gestures. Warm and cool tones in symbolic transformation elevate the feeling of spirituality.”

- ALEN POROPAT - FASHION DESIGNER

From Croatia to Canada; A Journey of Love & Art

Bo was born in Risika on the beautiful Island of Krk in Croatia. When Bo was in grade one, they had an assignment - a simple picture to copy and draw. 

“I remember how proud I was that my drawing was noticed,” said Bo. “I had an ability which stood out! That was the time I started noticing colour and shapes. In grade eight I wrote, ‘I want to use colour to communicate.’”

Even though Bo could not continue art studies in Croatia, her desire and interest never left her. She was always painting something.

She immigrated to Canada in 1970, where she resides today with her family.

In 1985, she graduated from Kwantlen College with the Associate of Fine Arts Diploma.

The majority of her work is executed in the acrylic medium on canvas, recurrently incorporating mixed media. 

CURRICULUM VITAE

Her continual creative preoccupation is with the human person - their experiences, interior life, search for meaning and their final goal.

  • Nature is used to simulate an ambient, giving her the necessary start as a visual platform onto which a human drama is portrayed. Her relation to art is very personal, revealing inner examination, penetrating beneath the surface to hidden depths, which materialize through colour and texture. 

    Work develops slowly through personal and intuitive observations, perceptive insights and events, maturing into its final realization through necessary and extended time. 

  • She works in series to accommodate her visual acuity, which extends beyond one canvas. And she tells us - as the original idea grows, it sometimes expands beyond her, even as she is at the centre of her creative activity. You can see this in series such as: Muse, Elevations, Era, Modicums, Targets, Introspects, Revelations, Love Triumphant, Places, Garden and Silent Conversations. 

    Bo has held one-person shows and participated in many group exhibitions. She has also donated many works of art to good causes. 
EXPLORE HER WORK

“The paintings of Bozica Grskovic, I would say, grows exactly out of the undefined, but colourful backgrounds she fills with human contours, devoid of identities."

"Her etheric emanations, referring back to Plato’s idea of spiritual equivalent of physical reality, exist sometimes alone, sometimes in pairs, or in repetitive rows evoking certain silent, almost saintly conversation.”

- IGOR GRŽETIĆ ARTIST

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