The Artist

I was born in Bucharest in 1981 spent my early years there and moved with my parents to Malmö Sweden in 1989. My studies took me across the globe, from Political Science in Luca, Italy, to a BA in International Relations from RMIT in Melbourne, and later to an MA in International Relations, specializing in  post-conflict reconstruction, from Webster University in Geneva and thanks to my deep love for knowledge, curiosity about the human condition and life in general I am also a certified counsellor in Integrative Physchotherapy. 

But returning to the topic of me and my journey into art, I have always drawn and colored... I mean since I could hold a pen and later in life I dreamt of being able to create but my studies, and later my work, entailed a lot of moving around which made a dedicated and stable pace to create impossible. Instead, I drew and when I couldn't I wrote and did so on anything I could get my hands on—napkins, receipts, scraps of paper that happened to be nearby. For years, I dreamed of having my own place, where I could set up an easel and really explore painting and communicate to the world through it.

That dream finally came to life when I settled in Malmö in 2008 and bought my first set of oil paints. But to my surprise, oil painting didn’t quite suit me. Turned out that as much as I love the process of creating, waiting for paint to dry was a challenge to my patience. And so, acrylics came to the rescue—fast-drying, vibrant, and a perfect match for the immediacy I crave in my work. From there, I began teaching myself how to paint, with the help of an acrylic painting course, and a memorable year of croquis classes and silk painting. Each step brought me closer to finding my own voice with color and form.

At the beginning I started painting animals and such to see what I could actually paint but felt too limited in expressing myself. The style I work in today has its roots in a 9th-grade school project on Picasso’s cubism. Cubism however is a too dark for me and even though at first inspired by it I found out that purism would be a complement, where simplicity and structure meet with a quiet elegance. My paintings are, in many ways, a reflection of how I see the world—contradictions harmonizing, complexities existing side by side, each element contributing to a larger whole without losing its individuality.  In every painting, I juggle the sharp and straight with the soft and flowing, masculine and feminine, flat surfaces combined to create depth, strong motifs without competing with their surroundings. To me, art is about embracing contradictions allowing them to coexist and complement each other,  to find a balance and harmony so that at some level come closer to the whole, to the truth- just as life often requires. 

Through my art, I seek to offer beauty and a space for reflection, discovery and remembrance, encouraging and empowering to an awakening to ourselves, each other and the world we live in. 

The Art