Landscapes Seascapes
Artists Statement
As a child, I was very gifted in music so my parents enrolled me in the music conservatory. It was at the age of 7 that my career was chosen for me.
Studying music in a Communist country was a very rigid and controlling experience. For most of my life this was the path I took: performing concerts and teaching music. However, as I grew older, I came to realize that my concept of a real artist is freedom - and music did not represent that to me.
One day I noticed my tulip garden and suddenly had the urge to paint it. I had never painted before but I was drawn to the colors and forms and I simply had to try. As I continued experimenting with color and form, my desire to paint became so strong that I ultimately gave up teaching and performing music to follow my heart. With painting, I have chosen my own path and in doing so, I choose the path of freedom.
I work from an authenticity derived from my native
Romania combined with my experience as a classically
trained musician. This experience is channeled into
the moment and onto the canvas where space, color
and feelings have no boundaries. As a musician and
painter I express with color what I hear in my
heart. By manipulating formal devices such as thick
and thin paint, line and edge, distortion and
rhythmic patterns, I create a feeling that allows
color to define form.
My concern is not the precision of the subject I see
- it is painting the feeling of what I see. The
essence of each painting is the connection between
the subject matter and me. When I step inside the
space I am creating on canvas, I want the viewer to
go there with me - to experience the openness of the
moment.
Expressing the truth of the present moment is what
drives me to paint. The past leads each one of us to
the present moment, and yet once we arrive at the
present moment, the past falls away and we are left
with only the positive now. As I paint, the colors,
shapes and forms evolving on the canvas allow me to
reach back towards my experiences as a child
traveling from behind the Iron Curtain, to New York,
and then eventually on to California. Digging deep
into a vast pool of feelings I reach out and express
on canvas the paradox between reality and dream,
embracing the ethereal and the mystery of the
unknown.
To this expression, I continuously dedicate my time
as an artist. Painting offers a passion to heal the
inner soul and an even greater enthusiasm to connect
with my true self.
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