During one Sunday service, he became overwhelmed with admiration for the iconostasis painted by Teodor Ilić Češljar that he decided from that moment on to become an artist.
He completed his secondary education in Sombor and Subotica, then he enrolled in a private art school in Novi Sad and joined the Atelier of Aloiza Castagni, an Italian painter, originally from Mantua.
His "Serbs Gathered round a Guslar Singer" was turned into a lithograph in 1839 by Johann Baptist Clarot.
[2] Simić painted mainly icons for the sanctuary screens (iconostases) and portraits of distinguished families of the time.
His portraits include Probojčević, Čovek u belom prsluku and Archpriest Matija Nenadović, some of the finest Serbian paintings of the mid-nineteenth century.