At first look, Jansa Gopic’s paintings seem unusual to an eye searching for regular medium on canvas. Instead of working solely with oil or acrylic, Gopic’s uniqueness stems from her work with nail polish.“I paint from memory, from my imagination, but I also take a picture if I see something exceptionally beautiful and paint from the picture,” said Gopic, a native of Serbia.

She moved her family to Grand Rapids eight years ago seeking a more stable political situation. She began painting without classical training, creating art on bottles and jars with nail polish. She was inspired to paint by her grandfather who excelled in woodworking.

Though seemingly commonplace, it offers a renewed hope for ‘beauty.’

“Well, I am no philosopher, just a painter,” said Gopic. “I make art to show beauty with my specific medium.

“If I weren’t an artist, I would find another way to show beauty to people with my life.”

Some of Gopic’s more impressive works walk the line between artist and philosopher.

One painting shows three scenes in intensities of grey and black. The top scene is a single person trying to force four spheres up a hill each twice his height. In the middle scene, three people counter-productively push their individual sphere into each other’s. In the bottom scene, two people impel their spheres together.

“This,” Gopic says without expounding much, “is life.”Echoes of Greek mythology permeate the concept, but it is a quite profound statement on life.

Her other works on display include landscapes, abstract graphics, portraits and still-life works, and those include nail polish, acrylic, oil and color pencils on glass, cardboard, paper and canvas.

Gopic pulled a framed nail polish painting on glass out of her bag. The painting is the “Piazza San Marco in Venice,” a popular art scene.

Throughout, the detail is meticulous and more remarkable knowing that it was painted with a nail polish brush.

“I used a magnifying glass to do this detail,” said Gopic. “It requires a very still hand.”

Gopic’s work prefers the self-sufficiency of beauty instead of promoting a political-cultural agenda.

Though some art should have an agenda, it is nice to be reminded of the irreducible value of beauty.