Sun Within Painting

Sculptor, architect, and furniture designer based in Vicarstown, Co. Laois. My work is wide-ranging. I explore many media and styles, including sculpture, woodcarving, stone carving, leather, gypsum, painting, metal embossing, furniture design, object design, and architecture. Born in Chisinau, Moldova, my roots are in traditional, indigenous, idiomatic artisan craft. Throughout my career, I have nurtured my craft skills and developed new ones. I love classical realism for its capacity to bring art to life. I enjoy working with different materials. AWARDS Tyrone Guthrie Centre Bursary Award 2023. Solo exhibition Award 2023 at the Art House Gallery, Stradbally, Laois County Council. Recipient of the Arts Council Agility Award, Autumn 2021. 1st prize Sculpture Award, Outdoor Sculpture, Sculpture in Context Sept. 2022. PROFESSIONAL CAREER My first profession was as a woodcarver, creating bespoke installations for civic buildings and replica pieces for the restoration of churches. This evolved into work as a designer for a furniture factory, specialising in wooden embellishments, in Chisinau, Moldova. To develop my skills further, I moved to Moscow, where I studied Civil Engineering at the Architectural Colleg, where I also studied freehand drawing and descriptive geometry before starting to complete a bachelor’s degree in architecture, which offered a classical education in art and architecture, including classes in various disciplines of sculpture, painting, and drawing. I worked as an architect in Moscow, where projects ranged from designing underground metro stations, skyscrapers and residential buildings to bespoke furniture design, before relocating to Ireland in late 2016. In 2021 during the pandemic in isolation, I restarted to make artwork by my hand from wood, stone and metal