Immortal Love 2008

This painting by Dragan Ilić Di Vogo is an otherworldly vision rendered in ghostly swathes of muted colour. It’s a scene of ethereal beauty, but when you look closer, the work is disrupted by the horror of life. There’s the figure to the left with a hand raised in warning, whilst in the middle, two figures tenderly embrace. The artist has really gone to town with the paint here. It’s built up in layers, scrubbed away, and then added again. I wonder what it was like to create this, what Di Vogo was thinking as they coaxed these phantasmic figures into being? The red and white stripes act as a kind of memento mori, a reminder of the fragility of existence. But maybe it’s also a symbol of hope, and how love transcends even death. I can't help but think of other visionary painters like William Blake, or even Odilon Redon, who sought to capture the unseen realms of human experience. Artists are constantly responding to one another, inspiring new ways of seeing and feeling. Di Vogo's painting invites us to embrace the uncertainty and ambiguity of life, and to find beauty even in the darkest of times.