Bonaca, 150 x120 cm, Carolina Barbarić

The works from the series “Between the Lines” were created in Zagreb and during Carolina’s Erasmus exchange in Krakow. The cycle explores a deeper, more subdued colour palette, embodied through motifs such as Measure, Reeds, Calm Sea, and Turning Point. The series communicates through carefully structured surfaces divided into rows, from which motifs of humans, animals, and plants emerge, striving to transform from the physical into the metaphysical.

Within this approach, Carolina was guided by associative thinking, through which she deepened the initial meanings of these concepts and reinterpreted them in her own distinctive way. This process allowed inner content and personal experience to emerge from within her and filter onto the painted surface.

Throughout the creation of this series, Carolina worked with the medium of oil on canvas—a material close to her practice, carrying a rich history of artistic references while providing encouragement and inspiration for further development. The works were created between Zagreb and Krakow, while at a certain stage the process focused on sketches and watercolours. These served as a faster and more immediate form of visual communication, from which she later developed deeper layers of meaning by exploring the materiality, texture, paint application, and colour relationships within each motif.

Compositionally, the works from “Between the Lines” are organised through rows, between which the central motif appears—a human, an animal, or a plant. These motifs carry a message that can be visually and metaphorically read “between the lines,” emphasising the connection between the literal and the transformative, the rational and the irrational.

The motifs emerge from an ever-present landscape, which serves as an important foundation of the cycle, connecting the works as a whole and providing them with context. The paintings were developed through memory, imagination, and associative thought, with the intention of breaking away from learned and established ways of seeing. The ultimate goal of the process is the transformation of the subject—an act of “seeing again” and opening space for a renewed perception.