Hello from the gutter of my mind. An obscure depository of early memories. A deep sewer pipe from which this art flows. Making art is rough. ’90s were rough. Ugly buildings, worn out tarmac, grey cul-de-sacs. Parents struggling in marriage. Parents struggling for money. Kicking the ball and falling head first. Quick to rage just to hide the fear. Weirdness of discovering injuries. Smell of gutter after the rain. I was just one of many unruly kids. We fought, we played ball in the tar, the mud, the gutter. We owned it. It was our pain, our game, our glory.

We are all ugly swans, my Serbian generation. Unlike the famous ugly duckling, ugly swans can’t ever hope to become beautiful. There’s no romantic delusion that we will transform into a graceful creature. We’re forever stuck. Too many social crises, too many jolts to a growing nervous system. We are ugly swans, I know, and the acceptance of our flawed nature is the beauty we can count on. By staying alive, we preach about this beauty. We, the apostles of the turn of the century. Your ugly swans.

Neighborhood kids used to brawl after each ball game. Ugly swans are sore losers. Pick up the stones, the tarmac and the puddles of mud from beneath your feet and swing at one another. Man... such savagery... We’d later come home to our gentle grandparents, knowing that we already are, and always will be different. Their ugly swans. Beautifully refined in our honest display of savagery, and already hard like our muddy playgrounds. How dare I betray my swans when painting? I’ve had unexpected leisure in later life, but could I ever aspire to be more than an ugly swan? I turn to my mind gutter for answers. There’s no truth but the gutter.

Painted abstractions are meant to show how my mind gutter looks. Unpleasant. As a painter I’d rather simply produce images than provoke targeted thoughts or feelings in an observer. Paintings are inspired by the maelstrom of past, bad decisions and sad memories. They are only an abstract of those memories. I don’t want to expose a viewer to a realistically painted, personal snapshot and s(t)imulate a fake experience, extend a false memory. I offer a new object to the viewer. An image by a way of abstraction, slightly removed from its sad origin, as I hope I myself have moved on with the time.