Painting — portfolio ivona pelajic

Letting Roots

Acrylics on canvas
50 x 110 cm
2025

"Letting Roots" is about my ongoing struggle with settling down—the quiet tension between belonging and drifting. After my grandmother passed away, I took a small piece of her plant with me, to my other home country. I planned to plant it, but instead, I just let it sit in the window sill. Like me, it remained suspended, its roots searching for soil that never came.

In the painting, the glass is both a vessel and a barrier. It holds the plant, yet the roots push beyond it, growing where they shouldn’t, where they can’t. They are imaginary, symbolic—a quiet defiance against limitations, a longing to take hold, even in impossible conditions.

This work reflects that feeling: the hope of planting myself somewhere, and the lingering question of whether roots can truly take hold when the ground itself feels uncertain.