Hi! My name is Dana
I grew up in a small town in Romania and little did I know
at that time that by the age 40 I would have travelled the world (38 states to
be more exact) and lived in four different countries (Switzerland, France,
Belgium and Greece). My calling for painting was recognised from a very young
age having my first professional exhibition at the age of 12 and I
continued with annual exhibitions until I was 23. I exposed in different
Romanian cities: Targoviste, Pitesti, Cluj Napoca.
However, life proved to be much more complicated than that.
I ended up following a professional career as international negotiator on
climate change issues. It was quite an impressive job
that lead me to be part of the negotiations and adoption of the 2015
Paris Agreement on Climate Change. It gave me the feeling that I was doing
something great for the planet. But there was little space left for my art and
the voice of my artistic inclination was becoming impossible to ignore. So, I
left everything and dedicated myself to painting. But my intrinsic motivation
remains the same no matter what my tools are: to make this planet a better,
happier place for all of us to live.
I believe that art steams from that part of our being that
transcends the mind, it might be our heart or maybe something or somebody even
deeper inside.
All my paintings are based in my practice of meditation and
the conviction that art happens when the artist 'is not there'.
I chose my technique depending on the subject matter and I
feel the best working with acrylic or pastel.
Acrylic allows me to
express both the chaos of the mind and emotions (the common condition of modern
man) but also the space of expansion where all forms merge and colours mix and
we tend to unite with something greater than us but always too mysterious to be
captured in words.
I chose pastel when I indulge in my passion for details and
transparency, trying to express something of the unseen texture of the
universe, showing how I think we would look like if magnified to a quantic
point where we are not matter anymore but only lines and points and space.
My paintings have been exposed in numerous exhibitions in
Romania between 1997 and 2004 (Targoviste, Pitesti, Cluj-Napoca). My works were
exposed in Belgium (Bruges, 2008), India ( Pune 2019) and they were selected
twice for online exhibitions in the US by the Fusion Art Gallery (2020). I
received twice the mention of the jury for my participation in the Luxembourg
Art Prize awarded by the Museum of Art of Luxembourg ( 2021, 2022).
I completed my art studies in Romania (Scoala de Arte Octav
Enigarescu, Targoviste (1997-2000), India (Pune): Meditative Art Course (
2017), US - The Art Students League of New York (2018) and France - Academie de
la Grande Chaumiere, Paris (2019).
