Daily Inspiration: Meet Dejan Zdravković

Today we’d like to introduce you to Dejan Zdravković.

Hi Dejan, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
I was born on November 24, 1987 in a small town in Serbia. As a child, it was noted that I was gifted at drawing and painting. From an early age, I was learning and working in my grandfather’s carpentry workshop. That’s when I got introduced to tools and started learning woodworking. I graduated from the Agricultural High School and enrolled in the Faculty of Agriculture. I was never interested in agriculture, but it seemed more promising than art. I studied at the Faculty of Agriculture for three years, dropped out and finally enrolled at the Academy of Arts. I studied in four cities and at the same time worked as a carpenter, painter, played guitar in pubs.

My artistic career started when I was hired as a worker at the Natural History Center of Serbia. I was twenty-three at the time. The delegation of the Natural History Center that came to visit the works, accidentally found out that I was studying art, then they gave me a piece of the wall to test my skills. When they saw the results, they asked me to paint 650 square meters of the wall, which I painted in 31 days. On these walls, I painted the period from the emergence of the first organisms to the emergence of man. All my life I wanted to be an artist, but this was the moment I realized that I could make a living from it.

In the next few years, I founded an art company called Dejan-Art. Its main activity is artistic creation (original and custom-made sculptures and paintings). For a while I got orders once every few months, these were usually advertising sculptures and mascots. All the sculptures were made of fiberglass.

When the coronavirus pandemic started, there were no more orders. In the absence of work, my fiancée (at that time) came up with the idea to sell original artworks online. We started posting drawings and paintings on several art-selling sites, which was not successful until we opened an Instagram account. Due to lockdown, I could not obtain the materials I normally used for sculpting so I began to sculpt using wood as the only available material. My wife and I divided the work so that I do the sculpting and she does the social media. Posting photos of sculptures and videos of the sculpting process has taken our business to the next level. Ever since, we gained more than 40,000 followers, sold over 80 original sculptures around the world, as well as many commissioned sculptures, including city monuments.

Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Definitely not. I never expected that developing an art business should be easy. Every day there are new difficulties with this work, especially when two people do the work of ten people. Teamwork makes it easier to overcome obstacles, it is especially important to have a common goal as motivation. In the beginning, the biggest difficulty was how to sell the sculpture. Now, the biggest problem is how to finish all the commissioned sculptures within the deadline. It becomes almost impossible to achieve everything, but that makes it interesting.

Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
I’m a sculptor, currently working mostly on original wooden sculptures. For sculpting, I use tools such as an axe, fire torch. Some of the most popular sculptures are ravens, horse heads, and screaming faces.

Can you talk to us a bit about the role of luck?
It all depends on how you are looking at the situation. The pandemic was bad luck, but we turned it into a great opportunity for business development. If you wait for good luck, you will die waiting.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://dejanart.rs/en/#
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dejan.art.sculpture/

Image Credits
Anđelka Zdravković