Jovanka, known as Jobi was born in Cheverly Maryland on October 30, 1968. At an early age, Jovanka’s love for spending mornings drawing on her father’s drafting table and afternoon’s visiting the National Gallery of Washington, D.C. launched her journey of self discovery in teaching herself to draw and paint. It was those formative years, that continued on throughout her life drawing and painting, that led her to become a professional full time artist.

As an artist, she has worked in her studio and exhibited in Adams Morgan since 1997. During that time, she started a figure dra...

Jovanka, known as Jobi was born in Cheverly Maryland on October 30, 1968. At an early age, Jovanka’s love for spending mornings drawing on her father’s drafting table and afternoon’s visiting the National Gallery of Washington, D.C. launched her journey of self discovery in teaching herself to draw and paint. It was those formative years, that continued on throughout her life drawing and painting, that led her to become a professional full time artist.

As an artist, she has worked in her studio and exhibited in Adams Morgan since 1997. During that time, she started a figure drawing group for professional artists and art students to work from a live model until 2001. From 1999 to 2002, she re-founded the Fine Art Exhibition for Adams Morgan Day where she had several opportunities to showcase her art in a fine art outdoor festival setting and the Meridian International Center, where several of her paintings where exhibited and sold.


Many art scholars have compared Jovanka’s work to Degas, Lautrec, and contemporary painter Elizabeth Peyton, in regards to painting style, medium and technique. Jovanka portrait and figurative painter who works mostly in acrylic, watercolor but also draws and paints in dry pastel, oil on canvas and paper. She works in a somewhat a combination of impressionist and realist manner, making her paintings increasingly luminous effect by using different washes of colors. Her technique includes some bold color and brushstrokes that bring the immediacy of the subject’s attitude, in order to bring an emotional response to her subjects.

Celebrity pop culture is a poignant quality as her subject. She recently painted a series of paintings taken from tabloids in order to show how mainstream media distorts reality. Her artwork magnify trivial events in the lives of celebrities while distracting the public at large from more pressing important events, such as the war in Iraq. Her Paintings provoke and question the media, the consumers who buy tabloids and read about several celebrities such as Britney Spears, Ana Nicole Smith, Paris Hilton and more.


She began studying at Montgomery College of Art and Design in 2003, where she won honorable mention in the college juried show and one year later, she transferred to the Corcoran College of Art and Design where she earned her BFA in Fine Art in 2007, exhibiting her paintings at the Corcoran Museum Gallery 31 for her Senior year. Currently Jovanka is working in her Adams Morgan studio and you can see more of her artwork at www.jobijovanka.com.