As violent as it all sounds, Mitic insists his work is about subverting guns and their negative connotations. “It's about disturbing the norm,” he says. “Weapons have been used against people. I'm trying to use it as a pencil, as a paintbrush.”
Before discovering the way of the gun, Mitic created mostly large abstract works. In 1995, he was also commissioned to paint a portrait of Jean Chrétien.
Originally from Belgrade, Mitic studied fine arts in northern Serbia at the University of Novi Sad and served a mandatory stint in the Serbian army before moving to Toronto in 1990. He now lives here with his wife, Azusa, and their two children. The oldest, his son Ansel, is 4 and has already had a joint exhibition with his father.
Some of his work has triggered a backlash from art audiences. After exhibiting at Toronto's Trias Gallery last fall and doing a few media interviews, he says he started receiving angry responses.
“I got some phone calls, ‘You asshole, how dare you,'” he says. “I just tell them it's just a painting.”
But fellow artists have expressed appreciation for his work, including Charles Pachter, the Canadian contemporary artist often referred to as a “northern Warhol.”
Pachter says he particularly enjoys one of Mitic's arms-free works, entitled Screw Stephen Harper in which the artist used 1,500 screws to create a likeness of our prime minister.
“Some of it is smartass, some of it is mischievous, but that's art too,” Pachter says. “He definitely knows how to push paint around.”
But whether or not Mitic's bullet art is good art, Pachter adds, remains to be seen. He warns that there's a distinction between innovation and shock art, and work like Mitic's often risks becoming the latter.
“Sometimes he's right on and sometimes he's not. But he's playing around with pop images,” Pachter says. “Every once in a while he comes up with something I think is pointed. But is he brilliantly talented? I can't say yet.”
But Pachter did recommend Mitic to the Beaverbrook Art Gallery in New Brunswick this year, which was seeking contemporary portraits of the gallery's founder for its 50th anniversary celebration.
Mitic proposed a portrait of Lord Beaverbrook called Blasted Beaverbrook and curator Terry Graff chose it for the gallery's permanent collection. It will hang this fall alongside two other Beaverbrook portraits by Pachter and John Boyle.
As for Mitic, he recognizes his work might be too outré for everyone's liking. But he stands by his method as a legitimate way of creating art with some punch.
“It sounds like something that somebody who needs attention would do but it is a very interesting process,” he says. “I don't want people to be angry; I want them to react.”
