We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Nemanja Petrovic a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Nemanja, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Did you always know you wanted to pursue a creative or artistic career? When did you first know?

I had always been interested in art as I was always drawing but really never knew it could even be a career in any way. In around 2011, Instagram had taken off and I started to come across all these different artists that I never knew existed. It really was a snowball effect as I was introduced to an artist and then that led me to another and so on. My horizons had been greatly expanded in that moment due to social media.

At the same time, I was enrolled at Buffalo State College and did not know what I wanted to do. I began taking my general education courses, eventually taking Drawing I to satisfy a requirement and I just loved it. From that moment on, I knew I was there to pursue art in some way. I would get into Art Education but that only lasted about a semester before I switched fully over into Fine Art.

Nemanja, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

My name is Nemanja Petrovic, I am from the former Yugoslavia and came to the U.S in 1998 as a child. My love for art was always there as I would pause VHS tapes of cartoons and draw them at the age of 5, leading me to create my own characters and draw everything I saw.

I got into the industry just by following my interests plus the help of social media showing me it was possible to make a living in this field.

My focus is mainly painting as I love to paint portraits and still life, leading to commissions which give me an opportunity to provide people with something that they love. Often times my commissions are of someone who has passed away and I am happy that I am trusted with capturing their image. There are cases where I have to combine photos or work from a really old photo which is the most challenging part of these commissions, but I welcome it and put my all into capturing the image of their loved ones.

Aside from commissions, I often paint friends or people I just find interesting in some way. I like to paint still life a lot as it gives me an opportunity to tell a story and push texture, color and often times touch on pop culture or things that I personally find sentimental.

I am most proud of being known as someone who is dependable and puts out good work, not for the intent to make money necessarily, but because I have a passion for creating something that has a well refined quality to it that also captures the eye.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

I think of my resilience as being the key factor in my current success. Everyone faces challenges and it is about having a goal that makes those challenges worth suffering through.

During my journey to pursuing art, I would often work many jobs and still make it a priority to find time to work on my art. I do not have one particular story that will get my point across but rather consistent habits and strong mindset.

During my time as an undergrad student, I would use the studio to work on school projects as well as my own personal work, always trying to practice something new, often being the only one there well past midnight which would sometimes lead to being ticketed by campus police. This was however necessary due to my other responsibilities of helping my parents with things and also working during the day at a gas station or attending class. I was always just trying to get the most out of every day, trying to balance life while constantly improving.

When I was preparing to go to graduate school, I took an overnight job stocking shelves at a grocery store so I could work on my portfolio during the day. Once I was accepted into a graduate school, I focused on making money to move to California and so I would work overnight and then immediately go to my day job at a factory. From there I would get a few hours of sleep and then straight back to the grocery store to do it over again. This stress led me to lose patches of hair but I was able to save enough for my move to San Francisco.

From there, I continued to work on my art as well as school projects, plus work at a liquor store after class until late in the night. I would use my days off to complete big projects.

It was a stressful time but I am glad that I went through those things as it made me resilient and made me not take my time for granted which I am grateful for.

Looking back, are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?

I wish I knew about instructional videos earlier on. To be clear however, I got into them about a couple years into taking painting seriously so some would say that is considered early. A different way I want to approach the question is that I wish the resources that are available today were available back then in 2015, specifically things such as digital video downloads and sites like Patreon.

Artists have certain techniques which you need to visually see to fully grasp. Many of these resources were not in my price range back then considering I was working at a gas station and many videos were between $150-$250. I had to save up for weeks to be able to purchase a DVD from an artist I liked just to get a glimpse into their process.

These days, those same artists provide instructional videos for $5-$10 a month in some cases through Patreon or even offer digital video downloads for less than $20 per video. This to me is a truly remarkable difference and allows important information to be accessible to pretty much anyone who wants to pursue it.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://nemanjapetrovic.com
• Instagram: Petros_art

Image Credits

n/a