Marine paintings — whether of clipper ships, yachts, or fishing boats — tend to be action packed — a Gloucester schooner rail down on the race to market, a 12-meter on a spinnaker run, Taeping in the Trades with her studding sails out. The paintings on these pages are different. They are serene and mysterious, their principal action the soft breathing of the Adriatic on the bright coast of Croatia. Mihanovic's own realism is an old tradition of meticulous detail and compelling moodiness, although there is a suggestion of the “hard-edge” realism of recent decades. These paintings have a very solid reality — all the heavy essence of the concrete with few distractions. Even the light has a weighty, stone-slab quality. It is the light of the eastern Med, the almost physical light that travelers in the Greek islands have so often observed. The boats are the typical double-enders of the Adriatic’s fisheries, full-bodied carvel types with lines that date back to Homer’s time, along with dinghies and tenders of the same chunky build. Solid, serene boats on solid, serene water, but with an odd softness of mood and weather.