Determined in her work by her homeland, persistent, consistent and meticulous in its constant interpretation, the painter Lili Gluić continues to deal with the theme of heritage with undisguised dedication and passion through the relationship between the contemporary heartless mentality and increasingly endangered artistic and spiritual values. By plunging deeply below the surface, the painter explores new possibilities of artistic interpretation of the Mediterranean landscape and raises an almost metaphysical question, the question of the soul.
"Dive deep into your soul" is an invitation to immerse oneself in one’s inner self, in one’s haven, in beauty, in genius inspirations, and finally, in one’s immortality where one jumps over the fences of time and space. Beauty is in the soul, and this is where the artist needs to look to recognize it and transmit it into the work of art, so that it becomes "beautiful".
In today's culture imbued with the spirit of science, the concept of the human soul has been brought to oblivion and disappearance and has been reduced to a rhetorical or poetic figure, to a word that is given only a symbolic value. In a chaotic world, where everything spins so fast, most people forget about themselves, about their soul. People are more connected with the external world than with the internal one that they feel in themselves. In this perspective, how is the "artistic soul" saved? To save one’s soul in a "soulless world" means to expand one’s view, to "dive deep inside", no longer presenting objects in their singularity, but through the network of relationships within which they are situated.
Emphasizing what she feels visually the most significant elements, Lili Gluić prevails over the traditionalist understanding of the landscape and the human figure, and creates her own, new interpretation in two possible ways. In the first one, she starts from a dialogue with nature, from the external to the internal. She abandons the descriptive interpretation, condenses her records through a new artistic expression that leads her hand to the threshold of a moderate art informel. This path leads her towards the summarization and abstraction of motifs into a recognizable sign, a symbol, in order to fathom and grasp the essence and create a contemplative atmosphere close to abstraction ("Oton Gliha: "When a painter feels to be the most distant from nature, they are, in fact, the closest"). The second starting point of this research process with Gluić is from the inside out. From one's own spirituality, from the place of one’s identity/continuity preserved in the beyond, towards the everlasting experience of reality. In these paintings, the author does not cross the boundary line of figurative painting, but with the naturalistic way of painting, she achieves the appearance of the unreal and visionary, in the atmosphere of magical realism. Instead of the old inlets, fishing world and regattas, there is now the world of imaginary spaces, mysticism and mystery. The island world. The continuance between the sky and the sea. Absolute peace reigns in these paintings. Is this how we imagine heaven, is it a space of eternal life? A single man rows in each boat, distant and alone. We wonder where it comes from and where it goes. We soon realize before the form of the diptych that we are invited into two separate worlds, that life continues and unfolds as a journey, a " peregrinatio ".
In her desire to bring the extrasensory content closer to us, the author emphasizes the relief structure of the surface of the painting, making it vibrant and mobile. Due to such structure, the surface of each painting is protruding into the surrounding space. With swirling movements, she builds the surface of the picture, the basic building forms are visible and can be felt: the sharpness of the sea cliff, the roughness of the pine bark, the knots of the olive trunk, the graininess of the border... As contrast, on the other hand, she concurrently creates a smooth and tense structure of the painting with slow and measured movements of an easier pace that reveal the meditative process of recording the atmosphere in the painting. We are guided carefully in every emotion, from exhilaration to calmness.
When asked how to survive in these times when everything is changing, Lili Gluić will say: "Escape to the primordial, to the eternal, recreate the new."
Creating a dialogue with the soul, her dives have offered us a pictorialisation that clearly testifies that creation is a spiritual process, and the work of art is a spiritual vibration of the artist into which the artist, consciously or unconsciously, breathes their own soul.
Maris Šišević, art historian
English (UK) 
Hrvatski