The World of Darko Taleski
art beyond the form
with colours and other media
Marilena Streit-Bianchi

​

​

Introduction

The Macedonian painter Darko Taleski has a particular approach to art that he pursue even before the year 2000 when he went to study Fine Art Graphic (Drawing, Painting, Graphic, Sculpture, Graphic design, Poster, Typography) at the University of Veliko Tarnovo “Ss. Cyril and Methodius” in Bulgaria. From 2005 to 2007 he did a Master’s degree at this same University in Advertising and Media, and obtained a diploma on Graphic design in contemporary advertising. He also studied traditional Japanese graphics.
He is an art teacher at the Prilep School OOU Kiril i Metodij s., Macedonia, and has followed specialized seminars and projects on the practical usage of Computer technology in the educational process (USAID 2006) and for the modernization of education.
In the past he has shown preference for abstract representations to reproduce with colours a world in which reality gets continuously mixed and loaded by emotions. He is subversive in his recent approach to art in which he is using his body as a canvas in which feelings and emotions can be expressed, because marks on his skin remain visible for a while before
disappearing.
Many artists are living in Prilep, a town in the South of Macedonia, north of ancient Pelagonia known since antiquity for its pure white marble production. Althought he is very active, participating in exhibitions and competitions in Macedonia and abroad, he does not belong to any defined art movement.
He has been mastering and using different media and is not only experimenting with them, because for him they are tools to pursue the quest of the Self and of the world in which we all live.
He says: “My inspiration comes anytime, everywhere, when I walk, when I talk to somebody, when I teach children, when I sleep, when I drink coffee, when I meet new people, when I see the same places and the same things and think over and over again, every time I look them in a different way…….. The inspiration comes like a flash. I memorize it and I transform it into an art piece as fast as it comes. Using the storm of emotions during the creative process, I am giving energy to the art works.”

​

Education and Learning
Education, sensitivity and nature are the determinants for the style of any artist. Artists are also the expression of their time and are influenced by the experience they may have by travelling and meeting other artists as well by the teachers in the art school. Taleski always knew that he wanted to become an artist.
“I remember when I was about 11-12 years old I watched some Macedonian movie on TV and there was a painting of Picasso’s “Woman’s head” that he donated to the city of Skopje for solidarity after the big earthquake of 1963. I liked the portrait made by Picasso, I do not know if it was the first time for me to see something different that I had been taught to be art. I loved art
and I wanted to draw, to paint, to do creative works. My art teacher in primary and secondary school was a very good water colour artist, very strict but... It was only at high school when Violeta Blazheska, a today renowned Macedonian painter, became my teacher that in my class we started using and practicing different techniques, we draw in a different way compared to others in the school.”
His parents would have liked him to graduate in economics, the profession they both had followed, the mother working as an accountant for a retail company and the father for an industrial company in Prilep. But nothing would move him from the idea of becoming an artist, so after finishing high school he went to continue his education in Bulgaria, in Veliko Turnovo city. He was the only foreign student that year and found very good art educated students from Bulgaria from whom he learned a lot. At the University the curriculum was classical art and realism, with a lot of drawing, painting, sculpture, graphics, all to be reproduced or done in a very realistic way. He wanted to experiment, to get a teacher who would tell him what he was doing was right, what he could improve, but that remained wishful thinking.
To make connections between his high school education (economics) and Art education he did a Master’s degree in Media and Advertising (Graphic design in the contemporary ad). When he had completed his studies, it was economically difficult to work as a graphic designer. Today he works in this field occasionally as a freelance artist.
The interest for learning he has for himself and his belief that education makes a difference in life has brought him naturally to the field of teaching. After graduating at university he found a job as an art teacher, a job that he thought would be boring, where he would be forced to repeat the same things over and over again. Today he appreciates the diversity of his students and of his daily activities, and he is an engaged, successful, innovative professional teacher loved by his students. It is a job that allows him to continue to pursue and be engaged in art.
“I hope in the future to reverse the situation, Art becoming my main profession and teaching the secondary activity providing the necessary stimulation and confrontation with reality and, most important, the possibility of sharing knowledge. In life, learning is a continuous process, a continuous struggle between the wish and possibility to realize what one would like to learn and to know. Barriers are everywhere but it is up to us to overcome them and make our life full of understanding and knowledge. Today I am learning as a person, as an artist, from the people I met, from the discussions I have, from the confrontation of the different realities and cultures. This is my richness ! »

​

Early work: Opposition of limitation -“It’s enough”
In 2002 Taleski made a series of artwork paintings named Opposition of limitation - “It’s enough”! a cry of protest against human limitation in thinking and at the same time a message for stopping the use of religion as a pretext to generate conflicts. This artistic soul exclamation of 2002 sounds today as a premonition and its reason to exist unfortunately did not vanish.

​