An exhibition of works by Prilep artist Pavlina Ilijeska will be opened in the art gallery of NUCC "Marko Cepenkov" in Prilep from July 4. The author was born in Prilep, 1949. She completed her education in her hometown. He started painting intensively at the age of 57, in 2006. Until 2015, her oeuvre includes over 146 painting canvases with representations of city views and landscapes, made in acrylic technique.

- By composing colorful landscapes and impressive city views, self-taught artist/amateur Pavlina Ilijeska creates an extensive painting oeuvre with motifs inspired by her hometown Prilep. Painting the grandiose monuments that distinguish the city under Mark's Towers, she creates a cultural continuum of historical flows that have left distinctive marks in the past and that shape the present in an inimitable and unique way.

Confident in her intuition, she steps boldly and dignified into the world of fine art. For the first time in the new cycle of works of art, he uses monumental canvases. With the meticulous and pictorial painting of the smallest details in landscapes and city architecture, the artist strives to completely fill the white surface. Distinguishing everything with - calligraphic painting handwriting, lyrical sensibility and vibrant color notes, the authentic artistic creation of Ilijeska grows into a cultural ensemble that testifies to the historical and spiritual value of the city - wrote art historian Victoria Dimeska.

- Not only because of the created works, but also because of the numerous intensive conversations about art and about the everyday life that surrounds us, I like to say that Pavlina Ilijeska is, above all, a person who has incredible intuition, which leads to my next conclusion that she is an author who it exposes the soul and its urges. And the happy ones, and the scary ones, or again, the sad ones.

The intuition that he skilfully conveys to the canvases with which we are surrounded today, regardless of the feeling that currently overwhelms us as viewers, is followed by a common feature that we often do not notice in art, because we are too focused on the experience of what is painted, especially if it seems familiar to us, and less to its background interpretation. That common feature in Iliyeska's works is freedom, that is, its intuitive manifestation, regardless of whether the painter presents us with so-called patriotic motives, or touches the existential essence of the individual.

Dealing with the individual, Ilijeska skilfully penetrates and collides with fear, restlessness and the search for ways to be reborn. And here, and in the case of patriotic-local themes, the second plan, i.e. the mentioned background interpretation is the work that calms, ennobles, rejoices or adds the additional strength for perseverance towards freedom, as, for example, the motifs associated with the "Difficult ", Prilep's Mogila or the Bazaar with the city's Clock Tower.

Ilijeska's painting depicts a freedom that does not remain only within the imaginary, or, on the other hand, a freedom that will lead us to the barricades in the city square, but one that unknowingly softens us, although perhaps the expectations were different - remarked the culturologist Zvonko Dimoski.