Lidia Boševski: Learning from Inspiration

While she teaches other artists, she doesn’t believe in doing it the traditional way. Her out-of-the-ordinary approach only has one condition: you have to open the door for imagination.

Since she first started studying, Lidia Boševski has had a quite interesting path. She graduated from School of Applied Arts in Zagreb (Croatia) in 1979. Then, she decided to study Textile Art and Fashion Design and, right after that, she started focusing on creating pieces that would combine painting and batik (a handcrafted technique to dye fabrics). Later, she began focusing on Product Design and also gained interest in ceramics, which she still considers a new field of artistic expression.

Today, she’s all of this: a ceramist, a painter and a designer. She’s been recognized by several awards; her creations have been featured in some major design magazines and she’s exhibited her work all around the world.

It’s in nature itself that she finds inspiration for most of her work now. Her creations live off the colours, textures and movements that she observes in this environment and she’s constantly trying to translate these sensations onto the objects she creates.

She once mentioned that she had never considered following the path of teaching. But that changed when a group of ceramists she studied with asked her if she would be interested in working with them. From the moment she embraced that challenge, she realized that working with other artists was a win-win situation: they would benefit from her experience and unique teaching approach. On the other hand, Lidia would earn the opportunity to be in an environment where learning and constant discovery were certain.

Ever since she started teaching other artists, she realized that she wanted to try a learning approach a little out of the ordinary. Usually, in courses, the techniques that students should learn are predetermined. Due to the course’s limited time, these techniques end up not being thoroughly explored and approached with little detail.

Lidia prefers listening to her students’ creativity and lead the class from there. Her strategy includes letting the artist decide which project he/she wants to work on and which path they want to follow – the method comes in after. Lidia believes that when we get working and start giving life to our ideas, the skills also start developing and the technical part of the work takes in.

In fact, most ceramists end up choosing one or a few techniques with which they create a connection and they use them as a form of self-expression in their creative work. So, learning shouldn’t be an attempt to accumulate skills and competences. Actually, this could even become a limitation for the artist’s development.

In that way, it’s not the technique that creates inspiration. It’s our emotions, opinions and unique perceptions that lead and inspire the technique. If we’re all different, why learn in the same way?