“ I paint what I dream, and I dream what I paint” – The oneiric canvasses of Dafinë Vitija

ABOUT MY TECHNIQUES AND CONCEPT

 

I usually use textures as base on canvas, I feel that sometimes when you have a painting which is flat but also like 3D it gives you another approach for the artwork. However, I like to experiment a lot with my painting techniques, I’m always searching for ways of painting which would add ‘spices’ to my identity in painting. Artistic growth is an endless road. You never know enough, you never discover enough. It’s like the universe, as much as you know, you know how little you know.
Generally saying, I must say that woman is my muse. And it doesn’t have to do with feminism. I just think we haven’t got the place we deserve in the world and society. My mother is my muse, my sister, my friends. What can be more mesmerizing and beautiful, and fragile and strong and inspiring than a woman?
My paintings inspire and are not to be defined. They determine nothing. They place us, as does music, in the ambiguous world of the undetermined. They are a kind of metaphor and always leave place for different perspectives, regarding the individual point of view.

The colors I use are generally automatic, I combine them intuitively. I use them as tools of my emotions or experience. As a result they should fit the mood on the painting.

 

 

“illuminating”- oil on canvas 2018

This piece of art is so personal to me.
I painted it through realization of the process of the “divine manifestation”.
The light is revealed. It’s synonym of spiritual and intellectual enlightenment.

 

“wishful thinking”- I see better with my eyes closed. Oil and mixed media 2018
You hear more when you listen. You see more when you observe. The style is surreal including the daylight which the subject is wishing to be all stars and fishes without sea.

 

 

“I daydream and night-dream”. Oil on canvas 2018
I’m just like a sunflower. I grow through strength even when there is no sun and it’s dark. I have the right to shine out. I am my own muse.
Motifs from Has, Prizren.

 

 

“beauty is in the depth’ acrylic and mixed media on canvas 2017
“What are heavy? sea- sand and sorrow What are brief? today and tomorrow.
What are frail? spring blossoms and youth. What are deep? the ocean and truth.”

 

 

“ I paint what I dream, and I dream what I paint” oil and mixed media on canvas 2018

I could relate this painting more to surrealism, and automatism specifically.
It’s a subconscious artwork. Sometimes I don’t like to think while I’m painting, and that gives the painting the freedom to become “something” unintentionally. There are times I dream a painting, and the very next thing I do when I wake up is try to figure it out what it was. Sometimes it’s clear. Sometimes not. However. I add other items myself.

 

 

“midnight marauder”2014

My sister was having her doubts about her that time  instrument “piano”.
She had been playing it for 15 years, she seemed unhappy about it most of the times, somewhat it was consuming her.
One day she woke up and said she doesn’t want to play it any longer. She chose double bass. She changed as a person and was blossoming all the way. I got inspired by her for this painting.

 

 

“Goddess is every Albanian woman” This  draws from Kosovo’s rich cultural heritage and reflects the image of “Hyjnesha ne Fron” (the Goddess on a Throne), celebrating the cult of the great mother idol, a terracotta artifact unearthed in Pristina in 1956. The idea of putting Goddess of the throne as a subject came from the fact that indeed every Albanian woman reflects the cult of the great mother idol as the Goddess herself.

 

 

“vivid dream”  Acrylic and oil and mixed textures on canvas.  80 x 60 cm . 2017
I dream in such vivid colours that I struggle to recapture them when I’m awake; but in principle this is a dream that I haven’t managed to remember it all.
The subjects are this lady and the old man leaving the night club where she works as a dancer. Lucid colors testify to a metaphor of the “unreal” since the lucid drugs themselves makes the reality surreal.

 

 

“ the dance of Love” 2017/ mixed media on canvas

The tree of love and life, life itself. Between the lovers. Beside the moon and the sun, there is no stronger bind and foundation of love, than that of true love. It is free like dancing in the clouds.

“Hiraeth door” there is place in my mind, with a garden of flowers all around. And when I reach there every night, I hear a faint but romantic tune, this feeling I have around daytime, when I crave that place. It is nothing but a place, or a feeling which never happened nor will.

 

 

“Escape boat”
“This will be me, utterly me. The day I decide to take all my sorrows and adversities, all the poison I have and put in on a boat.
I will take the longest destination. The deepest ocean, and will bury them there. I will ask the jellyfish to take them as deep as they can, so deep that they will ‘suffocate’ and maybe disappear. I will then swim along the ocean with, surrendering my being facing the skies.

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Along my artistic growth, since I was a little girl, whenever I saw something that seemed interesting, I immediately visualized it in my head. Usually they were unique things, jewels, stones, patterns, anything that can’ possibly be made twice.
This comes out of the fact that I love African art and their culture, also Asian arts.
They were my first inspiration when I started using true colors like : oil or acrylic… when I say ‘true’ I mean “painter’s” colors. I like ambiguity, I like to wonder when I see a piece of art.. that what art is all about. Whoever sees it creates a different version compared to any other individual, because we don’t think the same, and that’s our power. And that’s what a painting should have as its power: ambiguity.
Therefore, I try to apply it subconsciously by making a point out of it.
I paint anything that in my head seems beautiful just by thinking of it. What defines my paintings is textures, colors and different materials I use on them, and that feeling… that you might not have seen it before.

 

 

Dafinë Vitija: was born in 1990 in Prishtina, Kosovo. She’s a self taught artist and also has Bachelor in English Literature. She has been part of many local and region collective shows. She’s currently living and studying “Fine Arts “ in Istanbul.