I'm an observer who tends to romanticize everything. It's become second nature. This practice has deepened my appreciation for details and simplicity. The tendency to find beauty in the minutiae has become an integral part of my creative process. I am who I am because I’ve been guided into this world of culture, connecting my upbringing to the path I now walk.

My grandmother is a 1990’s Croatian war immigrant who provided for her family by being a penthouse housemaid for wealthy New Yorkers, two of which were the late New York journalist Jimmy Breslin and his wife, politician Ronnie Eldridge. Growing up in a traditional Eastern European home in the melting pot of Astoria, where my parents were the first to attend college, I learned an incredible amount from Jimmy and Ronnie. My first language is Croatian, but I learned English through Jimmy’s bookshelf and discovered art through Ronnie’s collection of illustrations and poetry books. Listening to Jimmy and Ronnie’s casual conversations with my grandmother, I heard about all sorts of people: Gloria Steinem,  Son of Sam, Tony Bennett, and The Beatles, who were interviewed by Jimmy in a helicopter ride around Manhattan, giving me an education in culture through their ramblings and introducing me to old American folk and jazz. Jimmy and Ronnie’s enormous influence led me to become my own person and realize that there's more to this beautiful world outside of the Balkan-American community that I've been brought up in. 

As a little girl, being babysat by my grandmother meant traveling with the R train at 8 o’clock in the morning, grocery shopping at the Whole Foods near Columbus Circle and sitting quietly on a big blue couch, dusty untouched 20 pound binoculars in hand.  When I wasn't listening to Jimmy chatting about the New York mafia while eating his quinoa salad, I'd be tracking the human ants and little taxi cabs from the 32nd floor of Jimmy’s Upper West Side apartment, as my grandma vacuumed and restocked the fridge. Little me would pick up how the ants scurried through Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue, each having their own little lives and priorities. I thought it was the most fascinating thing. I’d make stories up, creating dramas and parallels. This innocent fascination would lead to older me sitting in parks or coffee shops observing at a closer angle, sketching candid activity and using these real people going through their everyday lives as my subjects. No one was doing, going through or thinking the same thing. 

It was art to me.

My grandmother noticed my love of art when I was young, and I had the privilege of Ms. Eldridge gifting me a Metropolitan Museum of Art membership. Every month or so, my grandma would take me to the city so I could park myself in front of my favorite pieces and sketch all day. When a new exhibit opened up, I'd beg her to take me so I could geek out over Manet and Degas’ friendship/rivalry. Music, particularly lyricism, captivates me in the same way as visual art. Jimmy's music taste and writing talents filled my sponge of a mind, and I fell in love with poetry. The ability to write poems and use words to convey such imagery fascinates me. Artists popular in the sixties, like Paul McCartney and Bob Dylan deeply influence my own writing, as I fill pages with poems on reflections of life and the human relationships I’ve observed. 

Creating and learning about art is my lifeline. My bedroom is a sanctuary for piles of filled sketchbooks and journals, each one a testament to my drive to create and explore new ideas and concepts. My fixations were always there deep inside of me, I was lucky to have someone to open my eyes and guide me, so that I could grow. Jimmy and Ronnie’s influence crafted the foundation for my creative world.

I have been taking inspiration from the Impressionism movement and the Romantic era in my paintings. I love 1960s culture. I love lyricism in the music, the psychedelic sound as well as the rise of folk rock. The rockstar controversy, the freedom and the exploration of art and self. I admire how the 19th century Art Nouveau style had been revived and renewed in the 1960s. I love how medieval fashion became popular and reinvented too. I have become incredibly fond of art concepts such as Postmodernism and Conceptual Art too. I love Yoko Ono’s Grapefruit,  and more people should be discovering abstract ideas like hers. I feel that studying bizarre concepts and to be open minded and also practice whimsy is important to me personally. I am intrigued by the strange and surreal. These interests have led me to expand on my artistic abilities, poetry writing, and also planning out ideas for a novel that I’ve been working on for pleasure. Sometimes I feel like I can explode from the amount of creation my brain can barely hold. It spills out of me so naturally. So, I want to have people think, and show them what I see.

Constantly reinventing and being inspired, this is what my goal is for my art journey. The 1960s was a decade of drastic change compared to its previous decades, but also at the same time a decade of renewal. I am always changing, I am a human being. My favorite thing to do is hop on the train and take myself to a museum to explore, and then do it again, and do it again and again. I will never get tired of it. I am always learning, understanding and creating. 

I am an artist.