"Darja Radović Mahečić notes the significance of the blue colour in Branka Ridicki's paintings, describing it as “the blue vault of imagination that symbolizes a journey"."

Iva Koerbler, 2016

My artistic practice begins with an attention to place — to landscapes, abandoned spaces, traces of human presence, and the quiet changes that accumulate over time. I am interested in what a place can hold beyond what is immediately visible: memories, emotions, fragments of experience, and a sense of belonging or absence.

Although my paintings often emerge from encounters with real landscapes and environments, I do not seek to reproduce them. I gradually move from observation towards an inner image, allowing memory, intuition and imagination to transform what I have seen. Landscape becomes less a subject than a carrier of experience — a space where personal and collective memories can meet.

Working primarily with acrylic and mixed media, I build paintings through layers of colour, gesture, texture, erasure and reconstruction. The process is intuitive but grounded in attentive observation. I am interested in the tension between what is recognisable and what remains unresolved, between the physical presence of a place and the emotional trace it leaves behind. In this sense, painting becomes a way of thinking through colour, material and space.

My practice has also been shaped by movement between places and cultures. Encounters with different landscapes, people, histories and artistic communities have expanded my understanding of how identity is formed through place and exchange. I see encounter not simply as a subject of art, but as a method — a way of remaining open to what is unfamiliar and allowing it to alter one's perspective.
This understanding extends beyond my studio practice into curating, education and the creation of collaborative contexts. Through exhibitions, international projects and the Three Little Birds Artist Residency, I create spaces where artists, communities and different cultural perspectives can come together.

For me, painting and curating are not separate activities: one creates images, while the other creates conditions for encounters, dialogue and new ideas.At the centre of my practice is therefore a simple question: what remains with us from a place, a person or an encounter after the moment itself has passed? I explore this through painting, collaboration and exchange, seeking forms that can hold memory without fixing it, and images that leave space for the viewer's own associations and experiences.

I understand art as a form of attention, encounter and dialogue — a way of looking closely at the world while remaining open to what cannot be fully explained.