Boris Petkovski, an art critic

Despite decades of involvement in fine arts and   teaching contemporary art, I am nevertheless unable to explain Stefan’s artistic talent. When I first met him, I realized I was standing in front of an extraordinary mystery, a treasure contained in a little child that is barely four years old. Even if we are to seek an explanation in some metaphysics or mysticism, he is still an extraordinary anthropological phenomenon -- something that has certainly not occurred in Macedonia, but not in the world of the 20th century, either. Achieving such maturity in one's artistic expression at that age is simply astonishing. Here I must particularly make a reference to the Chinese culture, which will recognize some of its traces in Stefan’s works. In order to develop this kind of creativity, the traditional culture of the Far East would normally subject artists to a special discipline, such as identifying one's own personality after the concepts of Zen-Buddhism -- a total purification and extreme concentration on the inside, resulting eventually in an outward eruption of creativity, manifested either in ordinary calligraphy or in marvelous art works gracing traditional culture.

Little Stefan creates in this way, like the greatest 20th-century artists, Jackson Polo and Mark Toby, and particularly like American artists, who create in a similar way – with an explosion of their creative forces, which are not controlled from within and which define the process of their creativity, so that it looks like they create in some kind of direction.

Mark Toby was a huge aficionado of traditional Japanese and Chinese culture, on this basis of which he developed his own artistic concept, the so-called abstract expressionism, known as action painting in Jackson Polo's works. I find all this in this little man who is hardly over four years of age. I consider the result to be exceptional and I could easily envisage his works in the halls of major US or European museums that exhibit this kind of abstract art. I have not said much with this, but I have at least tried to identify the personality of this child, who is amazingly ahead of his time. I am not sure what he will achieve in this millennium, as he has already won part of the 20th-century heritage in terms of modern art procedures.

I am certain that his talent will not be wasted and that it will continue to grow, resulting in something I cannot predict, while rendering all banal stylistic parameters that are used in art criticism as being of secondary importance.

What is important is that we are witnessing but a moment in the evolution of mankind, an anthropological fact, important to the whole of mankind.

Ljubisa Georgievski, a film director

I would first express my personal fascination with Stefan's work, which has shocked me. Stefan is a child. Theories in Europe define a child as being different from a man. The child is subjected to instruction and it plays. Stefan is playing. Only, we are lucky that he plays with colours, turning his game into a relevant code, which is more important than the content.

Stefan has no message to send out to us. A four-year-old child does not do that. When I want to send something I mail it, and when I try to work, I play. Adult artists try to play, whereas Stefan plays spontaneously. That is his secret.

A great philosopher, Chwang Tse, had a dream unraveling the world’s mystery, and possibly Stefan’s secret. I’ll rephrase his words: I dreamt of a butterfly and when I woke up, I was not sure if I had dreamt of it or if it was the one dreaming of me now. I believe that Stefan is that butterfly. I think this is Stefan's secret.

In the presence of witnesses, which are actually his paintings, I state that Stefan is a wonder child of Mozart’s rank.