Mushroom (fantasy portrait of a mushroom), 2024

Jelena Petkovic  

A figurative painter, Jelena Petkovic works primarily with oil paints, creating portraits of women recognizable by their vibrant colors. Raised by her mother and grandfather, both architects and artists, she developed a love of drawing, painting, and art in general at an early age.

Jelena went from an art high school to an art and design university where she earned a bachelor's degree in interior design, but it wasn't until she moved to Paris that she began pursuing her passion for oil painting.

She began her career as an artist in 2017 when she exhibited her work for the first time in Paris, after spending two years creating 20 paintings and a completely new body of work. Since then, she won the “Best in Show" award at the “ALL Planet Earth" art competition in 2020 with her portrait of a woman inspired by a tree branch. She has exhibited her work several times in Paris, including at the “AAB" gallery, and participated in the “Art3F Paris" art fair with The Art Cycle gallery. Internationally, she has exhibited at SWISSARTEXPO, “ARTBOX.PROJECT Venezia," and at the South Art Dealer gallery in New York.

Two of her favorite exhibitions were the collective project “Dia de las Muertas" in Paris in 2022, which focused on the theme of violence against women in their own country and through the immigration process, and the Erasmus+ Youth project “Artistic Expression To Facilitate Youth Inclusion Processes" organized by Arci Chieti in Italy, where she created a collective mural in the streets of the ancient city.

In 2023, she began creating murals and was fortunate enough to participate in the urban art festival "Planète Périphérique" in Paris. The festival lasted a month, from April to May, and welcomed over 10,000 visitors. Today, while oil painting remains Jelena's preferred medium, she also brings her heroines to life through watercolors, drawings, ceramics, and murals.