Podgorica artist draws special portrait of Amfilohije with pencil, Jesus drawing is his favorite

Vuko Radonjic; Photo: Private archive Vuko Radonjic

7,000 likes and several hundred comments on the Facebook group "We won't give up our shrines" ("Ne damo svetinje") have been left on a post showing the work of an artist from Podgorica, Montenegro, named Vuko Radonjic.

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This is a drawing made with a graphite pencil, which shows the image of the late metropolitan of Montenegro and the Littoral of the Serbian Orthodox Chuch, Amfilohije.

On that occasion, we got in touch with this young artist who revealed to us that the drawing that has delighted people had been commissioned, and that he became recognized for his paintings of a religious character.

"I have been drawing, painting and tattooing all my life, but I have been tattooing according to the standards of the tattoo industry since recently, and for the last two years I have been actively drawing and painting every day, because it has now become my job. But, when you like doing something, no day is hard," Vuko Radonjic told us at the beginning of the conversation.

"I drew the portrait of Metropolitan Amfilohije because it was one of my commissioned works. More precisely, this portrait is my fourth with that motif, but I won't hide that it turned out to be the best so far, and I have a certain amount of respect for the late metropolitan. Most of my clients order paintings of a religious character and I am recognizable for that, although the direction I like to take the most is surrealism," Vuko pointed out for Telegraf.rs.

However, the work he is most proud of is the one showing the image of the actor Robert Powell from the movie "Jesus of Nazareth."

"At that time, this work was the pinnacle of some, let's say, drawing knowledge, and to this day it is my favorite work," this artist says with a smile.

The first thing Vuko drew was a miniature representing Patriarch Pavle.

"When I did that, all the painting work started afterwards. The painting, by the way, ended up as a gift to the Church of the Resurrection of Christ in Podgorica," Radonjic concluded.

Metropolitan Amfilohije was laid to rest on November 1 in that same church.

(Telegraf.rs)