Biography as a Spiritual Travelogue
Biography as a Spiritual Travelogue

Summary/Abstract: Wishes, will, desire, ambition in art - I am not sure that any of these win. All of them are subject to wear. Art endures. Its stratification eludes. Any comparison with what we call "normal life" is meaningless. This was written in Latin script, in the archaic Macedonian language, in minute characters, with a graphite pencil. The way in which it was written, the unusual clash of language and script indicating a dual cultural affiliation, the choice of tiny letters exhausting for the eye, and of an ordinary pencil that seems to invite erasure, all these items, seemingly unimportant at first glance, say something about the man who wrote them, about his character and life story. Somewhere between human modesty and artistic self-awareness, Christian serenity and Classical restlessness, hubris in the idea of creatively exceeding human measure, the painter Petlevski - I might add, my father Petlevski - chose a way of life that was by no means easy, but was in the final instance redeeming. He discovered an artistic and existential balance, his own golden section, and he might have said without any qualms: I can be no more nor less than what I am. My painting is my destiny.

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