Life is What you Make of it
Handwork “got me out” of all life crises, says Katarina Ilić, French language teacher, coach, painter, in one word – multi-potentialist
My day was filled with business meetings, discussions about profit, sales and numbers… The day passed slowly, one story after other, and the hot July day stretched before us like a lazy cat. I met with Katarina Ilić in the afternoon, with the idea of lowering the temperature and making a story about her paintings, handmade dresses, handicrafts that come from her soul. From the hot asphalt, I walked into Katarina’s apartment – little Cuba. Painted walls, pictures of Cuban musicians, red dominating the details and sangria with ice. Everything was there ready for the flow of the creation and ready for us to look into the world of the inspiring Katarina.
“I was born in 1967 in Belgrade, my father was a university professor and thanks to his job we traveled a lot, mostly to France, my mother was an artist – that’s probably where my different interests came from, on the one hand for linguistics and psychology, on the other hand for art,” says Katarina. “As a child, I was looking forward to the holidays. Since my grandmother is Czech, we always celebrated two Christmases and two Easters, and my grandmother hew how to pass to us her joy in all situations. If the weather was bad and it was raining, she told us that that was good because we would be much happier with the coming of sunshine… She put irreparable optimism and she taught me that I should always look at the brighter side of everything.”
For twenty years, Katarina has enjoyed a successful teaching career at the French Institute in Belgrade, at Singidunum University, the Faculty of Security studies and the Faculty of Law of the University of Belgrade. She completed training for mediators and obtained her doctorate at the Faculty of Philology in Belgrade, and then continued to searching for different ways to make foreign language learning easier and more effective for her students. That’s how she got to know neurolinguistic programming and incredible techniques that make life more beautiful, easier and harmonious. She began to apply them in her pedagogical work and achieve even better results with students. She is a member of the European NLP Association, the Serbian Association of Neurolinguistic Programming, the Croatian Association for NLP and the Center for Crisis Management and Negotiation. She is the mother of a teenager, a painter, a creator of unique dresses and so much more that cannot be expressed into a few sentences. “Whenever I don’t feel well, I pick up a brush, a thread, beads or paints and I make something, even if it’s just decorating a flower pot or repainting an old ladder.” As a student, I earned pocket money by making jewelry. Handwork “got me out” of all life crises,” Katarina tells us.
How important is passion for creation and creation for passion?
Passion for life is the basic ingredient of every creation, finally life itself is a creation. For me, passion and love are the most important ingredients of any art, especially music. And of poetry, painting too, in fact – everything that a person makes. When you taste a cake, you can feel how much passion and love it was put in it. On the other hand, creative work triggers a passion for life, to experience the magic of every moment and to enjoy all that is beautiful.
What is freedom for you and is creation perhaps the ultimate freedom of the human spirit?
For me, freedom is a state of mind and it is an indispensable ingredient of creativity. The most magnificent works of art were not created in the time of fascism, but in times when freedom was on the rise, a good example of this is the Italian Renaissance.
What is important to you in creations?
The most important for me are colors. I have nothing against black and white, especially in photography, but I experience life through colors, for me love and passion are red, joy is yellow or orange, sadness is mostly blue… It is important for me that all my creations “tell a story”. Therefore motifs of my paintings or my clothing are musicians and instruments, and motifs of my clothing are animal mandalas or butterflies.
Do painters paint what they lack or what they have too much of?
This is a good question. I think they paint what they have inside. I permanently try to paint joy, probably because there is joy inside of me but also because of my desire to radiate that joy and share it with others, to show that there is a side of life which is more beautiful and brighter. What drives me is probably joy. Crisis situations in our lives serve us as crossroads where we choose a new path in life. The path is our choice and the harder is the path, the greater is the joy of returning to the former streams of creation. After a very difficult situation that happened to me last year, I made a decision not to let it swallow me, but to gradually return to my joy of living.
Which songs will make us dance when we look at your paintings?
Each of my paintings is inspired by a melody, a rhythm. So each of them is named after a song: Cantinero de Cuba, Demasiado corazon, Tres palabras, Sway, Fly me to the moon… If the audience can hear the music and feel the rhythm while looking at my painting, then I think I have succeeded. That’s why my first solo exhibition was called Song book. I am mostly inspired by jazz or Latin rhythms, from salsa and mambo, by tango to my favorite dance, the sensual rumba. Although lately I’m more and more attracted to bossa nova.
Why Cuba?
First of all because of dancing, I trained Latin dances for 15 years and dancing remains my greatest love. When Wenders’ movie “Buena Vista Social Club” was shown for the first time in Belgrade, I was so fascinated that I didn’t want to leave the cinema. I wanted to stay and watch it for the second time. What fascinates me about the Cuban revolution and Che Guevara is this passion for freedom. After my first exhibition, I received an invitation to do an exhibition in Havana, unfortunately everything was postponed due to unforeseen circumstances, but I believe that Cuba is still waiting for me.
Do you plan your paintings or they are an expression and are created by themselves?
The starting point is always some melody that I can’t get out of my head. But I never know what will turn out in the end. Borges said that a work of art has no great value if in the end it turns out the same as we originally imagined it. Sometimes I completely change the colors of my painting at the end of the process.
What type of women wear your dresses? How do you imagine them?
The clothes I create are intended for women who, above all, want to be original. When I look at the youth, I have an impression that everyone wears the same hairstyle, the same color of nail polish, the same brand of clothing… everywhere there is too much sameness. When I was young, the point was to be different, I always sewed my own clothes, made jewelry or at least I added some detail to be different. It seems to me that today’s young people are afraid of individuality, which Fromm described in “Escape from Freedom”, as fear of the uncertainty that individuality brings, people flee into uniformity because it makes them feel safe, without realizing that they are abandoning their freedom.
Why butterflies and how do you choose cuts?
I create dresses with the idea to that they emphasize the most beautiful thing that each woman has, her tenderness, feminine figure, while leaving her enough freedom, not to constrain her. For me, the ideal dress is one in which a woman can dance freely and be herself. I don’t like clothes in which the female figure loses its shape, such as, for example, big straps, skirts which are too wide or some kind of rigid forms.
The butterfly is a symbol of lightness, beauty and true freedom. The butterfly reminds us that everything in life can and should be easy. I am worried when I hear statements like “life is a struggle” or “life is a valley of tears.” I believe that life is a gift and our most important task is to enjoy it and make it as beautiful as possible for us and for those we love. If life is a gift it’s a sin to refuse it, thus we should enjoy every day, every moment, every dance, every meeting, every glass of wine, every hug.
I deeply believe that life is what you make of it.
Text and photo: Jasmina Stojanović