The Other Side (2019) Digital Arts by Nikolina Petolas

Inspired by my childhood, where I was in a search of a secret passage of my grandmother's old house. I was a true believer that I will find one someday, but unfortunately it never happened. Although there was a scary attic with pigeons and even more scary basement, so that did it for my imagination at the time... :)



These are the stories about what happens on the other side of the wall...or on the other side of ourselves,  of what we see and comprehend at first glance, in any area of life.  Sometimes there is an exuisite side to common everyday things and relationships we take for granted. Some might even call it magic.. :)



A visual story about what happens on the other side of a wall (a secret passage) in a grand palace, a place of wonder, where things are not always what they seem to be, where animals are not always animals as we know them and where people are at times also something other than just people...





Once there was a woman living in a beautiful home, a large palace with many rooms, vintage furniture, decorated by numerous old paintings and large mirrors. 

She spend her days exploring the rooms, reading books and entertained herself by playing with many animals that lived in her palace. However, although rich and with many options she had to spend her days, she got bored very easily. She had everything, but still was missing something in her life. Sometimes it seemed her palace felt like a lonely place that lost its shine.



One day she heard there was a secret passage hidden in one of the rooms,  which lead to some strange worlds, where animals could talk and fish could fly and where many great things could happen. Supposedly in these worlds even the fruit had some crazy stories to tell.

The woman was trying to find the passage for a long time,  although she felt anxious about where does it lead to and what happens once she finds it.

 One night, while lying awake in her bed, she though about her life and how she needed a change but didn’t know how to make it happen.  She hoped that beyond that secret passage existed another world for her, a world where she could be someone else, other than just a simple woman, where ordinary things were maybe not so ordinary and where her beautiful but kind of boring palace may turn to the world of wonder again. Suddenly she noticed a black cat, the one she never saw  before, walking around the room and then stepping out of it through the door into the dark corridor.  The woman decided to follow the cat to see where it is going and after a while she saw it entering the wall in the nearby room. She  just jumped into it, like it was made out of liquid. The woman reached to the wall with her hand and suddenly she found herself on the other side of the wall.  When she found herself on the other side, things were never the same again...

My works are complex photo collages based on my own photography. I have been collecting photographs for over a decade. It is a long process of combining carefully selected photography fragments and illustrated parts, which are then transferred to computer and digitally painted.

"I am inspired by my surroundings and I see potential in various everyday things and relations, people, nature, architecture, even food. I see them sometimes as fragments of my work. Most of times they stay just that, fragments, and sometimes they become unified into a whole and therefore start to exist as a part of my sceneries.
By using real life photographs and textures I give my work a feel of realism, although the themes are far from being realistic…"

Giclée on Hahnemühle mould-made, museum quality, acid free paper, printed with white border. Comes with signed & numbered certificate of authenticity.

Also available as:
* 90cm x 56.4cm - edition of 5
* 120cm x 75.3cm - edition of 3

All quoted dimensions represent the actual printed image size, not the paper size.

Feel free to contact me if you need other size than listed above or print on archival canvas.

Please enquire with artist for any works not seen in gallery

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PhotographyDigitalArtPetolasNikolina Petolas