Matrimonium Painting

ARTIST STATEMENT I was a physician and an immigrant before I was a full-time artist. These are attributes that shape my story, and I proudly carry with me for this lifetime. They are the source of inspiration and the engine at the heart of my art. Leaving behind my natal country, my family and friends imbue my creations with melancholy and nostalgia. Romanian Spirit is unique due to its turmoiled history of two millennia of oppression and perennial revival, defeat, and re-birth. It is a fatalistic view married to an immortal zest for life. Places and people from another time and continent populate my work. While I re-animate them, I create a respite and meditation space, a shrine to my other life, and my tribe. I have worked with patients since the 1980s. I witnessed the border between life and death, the newborn's vigor, the comatose's lethargy, the new parent's excitement, and the widowed sorrow. This sweet burden requires a balancing act. I use the creative process to dissect the soul's journey, deconstruct emotional events, and tap into a higher reality with which Romanian Spirit directly connects. Wanderers have imaginary roots; their home is a timeless realm, a mythical stretch between estranged and familiar. Like all folks in exile, the story is paramount as, ultimately, it is the only thing one can gather in an instant and run. My art reflects the breadth and immediacy of this journey. For many decades now, my home is the United States of America. I love my adoptive country more than words can say, as it gave me the chance to reach my full potential. Deep inside, though, I have that Romanian Spirit, silent but immortal, smoldering in my primary thoughts and emotions, in that very place where art arises. My work is the instrument I use to understand the world and give meaning to the events that shape it. The process is eclectic: I experimented with large, interactive installations, short videos, and 2-D work. In the last several years, I use painting as the preferred medium, as I believe it is the most subtle way to create compelling, engaging visual experiences. My style is a continuum between figurative and abstract; sometimes, I want to emphasize the narrative; other times, the visual abstraction triggers pure emotion. I create for the masses. My work is a dedication to humanity common in us by employing the simplest of the heart's building blocks: love, survival, death, longing, sacrifice, memory, and imagination.