Aleksandra Durman: Painting from the inside

By Alex Cimpeanu

What do emotions look like? What colour are they? Aleksandra Durman says that sadness doesn’t have to be blue. It’s colourful and so is she, because the thing that stands out most about her is colour. Whether that means bold socks, colourful oversized jewellery or golden leggings, the 49-year-old painter is sure to make an impression.

Artwork courtesy of Aleksandra Durman

Durman has always been an artist, although she only managed to pursue her love of art later in life. Her relationship with painting was intermittent. She came from Montenegro to London in the ‘90s, after being rejected from art school, planning to only stay for a year. More than 20 years later, she’s “still here and still very happy”.

“Living in the big city and experiencing a metropolitan lifestyle full of new and diverse cultures was always very exciting so I started painting again soon after coming to London,” she says. Her current cosmopolitan life is a huge contrast from her teen years in Montenegro, where she spent most of her time in nature, surrounded by “dramatic looking mountains, wine yards and the deep blue Adriatic sea”.

No wonder she paints landscapes. With a twist.

“My work now represents how I see both the physical and my internal emotional landscapes and their synergy.” Aleksandra Durman

At the start of the millennium, Durman became a mother and art became secondary. She remembers being busy with retail jobs and having to look after her son, with time for painting becoming a rarity. A decade later, the passing of her father, who had always been supportive of her art, made her consider studying again.

She was heartbroken about her father’s death, and remembers vividly the day her life changed. She had dropped off her son at school, and on her way to her doctor’s new surgery she saw a big yellow banner advertising Art and Design classes.

“Just like guided, I went straight in,” she said.

Aleksandra Durman in her studio in London

“I found my Art School and I’m going to study art!”

Durman completed a foundation year at The Working Men’s College, where she created an arts portfolio to become eligible for university. Five years later, she graduated with a Master of Arts from Wimbledon College of Arts.

“When I look back it always makes me smile, thinking that when something is not working or happening when expected it’s probably for the best reasons, and something better is on the way.”

Finishing her education journey is one of her proudest moments, along with becoming a mother and having her first major solo show in her place of birth, Porto Montenegro, in 2017.

Today, her art helps her connect to her inner-self to experience life. She now paints what she calls “emotional landscapes'' - which may seem like random colourful brush strokes on a canvas, but they are deeper than that. It’s a way for her to address her internal geography, her feelings and her recollections of events that have impacted her life.

“In my paintings, I make emotional dialogue with colours by adding detail to my work,” she explains.

“Through working intuitively, feelings and memories are evoked, which may or may not have been conscious when I started the work.”

Her practice is influenced by spontaneity and the Abstract Expressionist movement. Durman uses energetic brush strokes, gestural marks and random colours applied to large canvases.

“All of these techniques are fundamental for releasing my ideas, feelings and memories, which flourish and blend, allowing the paint to reveal whatever forms materialise- emotion emerges organically within the paintings,” she says.

These days you can find Aleksandra Durman at the Royal Academy of Arts in Piccadilly, where she works full-time as a Visitor Experience Host, online on her website, or at Hampton Wick, where she is preparing her new exhibition, Lady of the Rocks.

“Hampton Wick holds a very fond place in my heart,” she says, “I am very pleased to be exhibiting to a local audience, as a local artist.”

“I was delighted when I discovered that what used to be an antique shop in my time became an amazing gallery and now I will be having an exhibition there, seeing local visitors interact with my artwork, which is, in fact, a ‘Hampton Wick Retrospective,’ she says. “

“It feels very significant!”