Danko Merin

Danko Merin, an artist that originates from a determined type of new figuration, from the echos of expressionist realism, expresses in his paintings stratified, complex structures of his individual experience, far from the mere description or explanation. In front of his work, an observer penetrates and directly explores the impersonal and sterilized purity of the artistic syntax. It is stimulating, it can refresh and humanize. Movements in these pictures represent the transmission of vibrating energy. They are like the waves of light in the centre of a man; they meet at the subtle point where man's physical shape and nature meet. It is a force from which man sometimes gently moves away, but soon after, desperately wishing to come back, dives into it again. If you asked an artist which themes and motifs are found in their works, their most common answer would be a self-portrait. Through the scenes of landscapes, flowers, and historic scenes, painting is just another way of keeping a diary. A personal diary where yesterday is a reflection of today's memory and today's dream becomes a nuance for tomorrow. Thus, art becomes a way of remembering past experiences and events and shares them as personal artistic stories with others. And when he is telling a story by painting portraits of others in the manner of figuration, impressionism, abstraction, one can inevitably sense the outlines of a self-portrait through all transparent and opaque layers of the painting and white canvas surface. Going through this hall of mirrors, remembering, and sharing personal experiences, we can comprehend the universal self-portrait which brings us closer to the act of creation. Creation in both art and the garden is closely connected with a thought of a better world. Hope for the future is at the heart of all gardens and art. Art as well as flowers always make people better, happier, and more useful. Through the prism of the universal, for a man of these activities become the sun, the food, and the cure for the soul. Through Nature and all her glints, I could always learn that the colours have more or less red, yellow, and blue and how colours in the pictures can be dark or bright. The nature of change and gradualism in the garden has spoken to me about the course and the layers of work in painting, adopting the idea that tomorrow's flowers come from the seeds of today. This continuity seems right to me. It doesn't strive to skip or accelerate any part of growth or maturing whether my gaze was on nature, garden, flowers, or on ripening colours on a piece of art. In recent years, nature, and especially the forest and the flower garden, have been a great source of inspiration for my work.

He is engaged in painting, graphics, teaching, illustration, digital design, and art pottery. 

He graduated at the Academy of Fine Arts in Sarajevo (Bosnia and Herzegovina). He is a member of HDLU and the Croatian Association of Artists of Zagreb.