Inspiration and Expression Through Art
By Ramona
I was born in Romania and grew up during the hard comunist dictatorship of the 80’s. Freedom of choice, of speech and basic human rights was nonexistent.
I remember hating the grey all around me. Everything seemed to be grey. The buildings, the books, magazines, newspapers, TV, our school manuals were all black and white. Can you imagine a world without any colorful advertising? There was no need for advertising as everything was state owned and in shortage. People wore mostly navy, grey and black, due to shortage of washing powder and dusty roads.
I had seen color at my grandparent's village, where I lived for two years after my parents divorced. There, the nature was abundant in colors, changing constantly with the seasons. From the delicate spring blooms, to the full colors of summer all the way to the most magnificent autumns and crisp white winters.
When I was 12, I saw a book on the works of Michalangelo. That book changed my life! An instant longing to go to a place where there is art and color took seed in my heart and grew inside me year by year.
One year after the communist regime crumbled, when I was still a teen, I had the opportunity to leave Romania and move to London. It was one of the most challenging and beautiful periods of my life.
What followed was a path of learning and growing, I discovered painting and fell in love with it immediately. Unfortunately, my mindset hasn’t caught up with my heart and it took me 20 years of personal development, leadership courses and deep introspection in order to grow the confidence and believe in myself to become the artist I am meant to be.
There is something special about being an artist. It allows me to express my thoughts, feelings & views that are captured in a single frame, frozen in time forever, portraying the message that will be ever present for generations to come.
My art is my legacy and it’s aimed to inspire women to find their strength and their voice.
As my self-discovery journey unfolds, my artwork gives voice to musings on the complex and demanding role of the modern-day woman. We live in a dynamic, rapidly evolving society that requires her to be powerful yet feminine, decisive but delicate, strong yet caring, assertive yet nurturing.
The animals in my paintings are a vivid expression of these qualities and a reminder of the abundant inner and outer resources we can draw on. I explore the woman’s state of introspection and vulnerability and aim to capture the moment she looks within to find the qualities she needs. I want to emphasise and remind her that we can have sublime balance between strength and femininity, beauty and power, ambition and sensibility. We can have both sides and let’s not trade one for the other.
I believe women’s strength and power is sometimes misinterpreted. We don’t need to be like men to be powerful. Our vulnerability, our intuition, our compassion are strengths not weaknesses. Because of these qualities we can be powerful in a way men will never be.
My inspiration comes from various places. History is a great teacher, and researching strong, historical, female figures is a great passion of mine. I also connect to the Goddess energy though female circle meditation and to the spirit animal though shamanic meditation. Female strength comes from within, and centering and tapping into your inner power is essential to making that small change to believe in your own power.
The animals conveyed in my pieces are our inner strengths personified. Some of us have roaring lionesses, whilst some have graceful horses.
