COMPOSITION,1969

oil on wood 

84 x 102 cm

PAINTED FENCE II , 1970

mixed media on wood

87 x 56 cm

DREAM,  1970

oil on wood, tondo,

r = 30 cm

LOVE, 1970

oil on wood,

r = 27,7 cm

OLD  TOPICS,1969

Mixd media on wood

triptych, 58,5 x 50 cm

TRIPTYCH CHRIST,1969

Oil on wood, 

51 x 70 cm

 

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THE MAGIC AND JOY OF

                                                  PLAYING

 

 

 

   As stated already, Škerlj's reactions of a painter have been quick and spiritual from the very beginning - still, sometimes even too quick so that much has (unintentionally) remained omitted or only slightly touched and insufficiently elaborated, even used (technique - and poetics-wise). Like his elder colleague Antun Masle, Škerlj was using his evident talents, inspiration and imagination unsparingly, skipping the time of a logical maturation: as if he only cared to show what mattered to him and what he was capable of doing, without using what s started or announced to the very end. Why the actually unnecessary ¨haste¨? On one hand, probably because of a fear of  ¨losing¨ too much time teaching and so staying behind; on the other, exactly because of the impetus induced through his work with children that kept rekindling the urge to play, and with something new. Each of his cycles, quite a few in his thirty-year long career, was actually yet another regaining of Freedom. The challenges of the new, his often and often momentary saturation with what is done offered to the shining Madonna with the capital ¨F¨ large spaces of imagination that opened up easily and with particular motivation, so that she (freedom) showed up inher full range: mild, good, merciful and seducing, then again demanding, stubborn and compelling, presenting the painter with a self-consciousness, showered with slf-assuredness, pleasure and fulfillment while demanding new adventure, committing, ¨pushing¨ him forward, setting conditions and moving the limits of the scope ever more far away. That is why the shifts and changes that appeared up with every new conquered space were only growing: cycles multiplied, split, grew and vanished within shorter or longer spans in time, enlarging after some inner (dis)order of the author, sometimes alike, as if merged together with some plastic seams, sometimes completely different, diachronically set, thus showing his moral much better than the individual paintings themselves.

Their common denominator was a paradox and a strong expressive sway, and a liberated colour, while a link with his own opus - the paintings done any time before, the dots overcome by far, the colouristic chords hidden in the pleats or only shyly announced, the forms and themes almost forsaken- all made a stronghold that served as a trustful signpost. Yet, inasmuch as it may sometimes appear that Škerlj s frequent excursions into the bizarre and paradoxical sparkling compilations as if his constant nomadism was to escape the issue of the ¨fragmented¨, crushed reality and to recede from facing it while dreaming his own, ¨detached¨ dream, the eye of his spirit was at a constant guard: turned towards the right side the pointer felt and experienced profoundly the time he lived in, taking careful notes if its quivering impulses, collecting and dissecting its scattered fragments and building them up together into units which found their figurative syntax always somewhere at rim of global trends

TWO, 1964

oil on cardboard,

66 x 55 cm

ATLAS, 1970

Mixd media on wood,

37 x 30 cm

EMICA, 1967

oil on canavaS,

33 x 27 cm

CITY PORT, 1967

oil on canavas,

50 x 90 cm

DUBROVNIK II,  1967

oil on canavas,

70 x 90,5 cm

TWINS, 1970

Mixd media on wood,

22 x 35 cm