Thoughts. Looks

Maybe you remember my Masks and the thoughts I've associated with them. Here is something related, but in a more descriptive manner.
You can see lots of faces here, but, if you pay a little attention you'll notice that there is, in fact, the same face. What makes the difference is the look on the faces. Which look is in fact a feeling that cannot be hidden.
You might say: "Well, they all look sad to me". You're probably right:D

Thank you, Cristi Mungiu!

I spent the last two days changing a couple of European countries and airports and meeting quite a lot of people. And I probably never been prouder that I'm Romanian. On Sun evening I was in Spain when I heard at the radio about the winner of Palme d'Or and my first thought was that I hadn't understood correctly. Then, I saw the French news, then read the French newspapers, and the English ones, and then, while checking-in, people congratulated me for the prizes Romania got..

Well, this is something that I'd like to live again and again :)

I admit I heard only once before about Cristi Mungiu when I saw him at a TV show, some time ago, but I am one of the few that goes once a week at a small cinema to see the european productions.

Anyway, I'm not writing about the movie today (as I haven't seen "4 months, 3 weeks and 2 days" yet) and not even about what the big prize at Cannes means...

I just want to thank this guy and his entire crew for taking Romania, even if only for a couple of days, out of the political morass and its daily triviality and for the few tears of hapiness that they brought into my eyes.

Thoughts. Probably the best human being I've ever encountered

No peinting today to comment, but something much more valuable.

I'm not very good at expressing my feelings, mostly because I don't have too many feelings and, for the few I have, well, I just prefer to keep them for myself. But, I'll make an exception today, for an exceptional man as it's his birthday and letting him know what I feel might be a "present" that he'd like.

He is a Japanese "lost" in Bucharest whom I accidentally met less than 5 months ago and which is, by far, the person with the purest soul that I have ever known. And even if he doesn't want to accept this, he digs a little bit of kindness from absolutely everybody he gets in contact with, 1st as a response to his huge kindness, and then, inevitably, in the relationships with others.

So, I have to thank him for giving me back (partially:) ) the faith (that I've lost many years ago) in people's kindness and purity.

Happy birthday, Marcos! And never forget that, because of who you are, you are the richest man in this world!

Thoughts. Old face

There are very few things that sensitize my (frozen) soul and amid them I could name new borns/babies and old couples that, as incredibly as it may seem, still love each other after half of a century or more. If I wouldn't have seen such couples with my own eyes, I would certainly say that love is just the invention of the feeble ones (at this moment, I just don't say this all the time:) )

Anyway, how many of us think about (self) oldage? And, if doing this, what is the overall feeling? Well, excepting the inherent sadness coming from the social problems that seem to increase proportionally with the fellow's age and to reach their peak exactly in the moment when a human being should normally just rest and enjoy his last years on this planet, very few of us see themselves as ill, needing continuous care and alone.
You might have no kids, single with no hopes (or caught in an unhappy relationship) and be in your early 30s, you'd still imagine yourself travelling with your half when being in your 60-70-80s or reading stories to your 5 grandsons/granddaughters.

Reading these lines from above you might conclude that people are very optimistic.
Nothing more false... The truth is that people prefer to believe in miracles and in 180degrees bends in their lives without doing anything. Still, these foolish hopes are somehow good. Good because sometimes (like 1 in a million cases) miracles do exist :)

Let me talk a bit about this painting which represents an old person's face, alone in a splitted pretty colour uniform background.
There are no other faces in this background and very rarely a splash can be noticed. So, this guy was a solitary all his life and with not too many memorable moments.
That's why he has no grandchildren around, he's not travelling and there no half for him in this painting ;)

Thoughts. Eden

This is probably one of the least abstract of my paintings (or, at least, this is how it appears to be). The paradise and the expections of the "world"/life after death are pretty common subjects and you can find them in almost any book/paper/blog/magazine and almost each painter has one painting about this.
It's in the the human nature to expect better things to happen somewhere in the future (this life or another:) ) and to rennounce fighting for better right now. Of course, since it's much easier to wait instead of acting...
Well, for me paradise is here, in this world. That's why you don't see winged angels playing the harps here, but mountines, rivers, sky (where the big fish eats the small fish - exactly like in this world), hills, a house and what I call "the center of earth". For this "center of earth", I let your imagination run wild ;) and you'll see whatever you want to see :).
It took me 20minutes to paint this (which is very short), only because I added here pieces of my memories.
Eden is nothing more than a series of great moments in life (mine, yours, everybody's) which are, of course, (very) short. But take the bright side, if they last forever, they become part of your normality and you'll never appreciate them as being great :)

Don't fool yourself with the wonderful moments you'll have "after", enjoy what you have now and for what you don't have.. well, just do your best to get it (nobody will put it in your sack, especially when you keep it well closed)

Thoughts. Eye

In this painting (very much related to the "two bodies" painting), I tried to show two halves of some human face attributes: half of the eyes and half of the mouth.
It's easy to see that this is far from being a human face. But even with so little clues, it's not hard to see it as a face. So, are the human beings so easy to identify?:) Probably yes, which is normal as they are identified by other human beings :)
Let's see what this human face substitute can tell.. The story will be short, since there are so little things to talk about.
Starting with the eye, the 1st thing to notice is that this is an orange eye. Why? Has the orange color a meaning? Orange is related with the sensual/sensorial needs, be they pure sexual or combined with some incipient need of affection. Usually, a passion for the orange color means the desire of satisfying the physical needs, of maximizing the pleasures but (and this is a big BUT) the final "scope" is getting to that moment of dead calm. It is not really the case of this person, as the eye ball is pretty large reveiling a state of excitement.
The 2nd thing to talk about is the half of the mouth. Its color is very near to the normal one, still the red is obviously enhanced and the lips' dimensions are pretty big. They just come to bond what the eye is already saying. But, the red is not so red, it's a cherry-red, which has a different interpretation than the sexual, agressive red. Cherry-red symbolises the romantic love...
Well, if you're a color interpretation fan, you'll find in the background tones much more contradictions ;)

Thoughts. Transsexual

You'll not read here about my opinions regarding (trans)sexual stuffs. The only reason is that I have no opinion excepting that, from my point of view, everyone should do exactly what (s)he feels with the only limitation of not hurting the others.

So, let's get a bit into the history of this painting.. Even it's not really my type of novels, I loved "The Picture of Dorian Grey" - Oscar Wilde. Probably most of you read it.. It's about a handsome guy that is painted by a friend, the portrait is wonderful but it is also alive: Dorian remains young&beautiful forever (not really forever - as he dies at a moment:) ), but the painting changes reveiling all the vices and the miserable life of Dorian. The painting is the visual version of his soul, which is not at all so pure and handsome as Dorian's appearance.
I was painting this when a friend asked me "What's with this freak?" and I said "this is Dorian Grey" , more as a joke.

How much of what we are can be really seen when the others are watching us? How much of what we are we accept? How much we understand?
The answer for the 1st question is usually a quick one: "the others see how much we let them see". And this is partially true, we want some people to see more, some people to see less, some people to see nothing. But, (especially) when we want some people to see more, we do a bit strange thing: we let them see what we think they'd like to see, not what we are. Pretty a paradox, but we hide the most from the people we really care about mainly because of a fear to not dissapoint them. (I'll not talk more on this, lots of shrinks already did it)

Well, well.. but what has this painting to do with all this stuff?! Well, the face in this painting is far from being interfluent: the eyes are visibly different, the nose has a color that has nothing to do with the overall face, the ears are disproportionate, the lips might give the impression of smiling but the eyes are sad, etc...
Why all these? (after all, I'm not such a poor painter :) ). Let's imagine this person is in front of a bunch of different people: people he would like to attract, people he hates, people he loves. And he transmits some signals (the ones I was talking about: he lets some people see something, he hides other things, etc). What's the result? A non-human face.
"This never happens", you'd say and you'd be right ;)
But have you seen paintings that grow ugly and old? No, because it never happens :)

Thoughts. Red fantasy

I admit that this painting can mean absolutly everything. At the moment I've painted it (about two years ago) it had no special meaning, it was more of an exercise. Nowadays, I had some experiences that I could easily express through this painting, so I'll talk about energies :).
I bet you all heard of that aura that is supposed to attire each of us. I always imagined it as a vertical shiny but invisible energetic stuff, somehow meant to protect its "master".
I admit I had some surprise when I realised that it is more horizontal than vertical, more a magnetic field than a static hard to identify energy, and that it's scope is more out of its master's body but strongly orriented to the others.
What was even more strange is that I couldn't identify what exactly is its action radius, meaning it can vary very very much. Some of these magnetic fields are felt by others from tens of meters and some are never perceived.
What you see here is the representation of three "magnetic fields". The two at the bottom are perceptible one to the other and the upper two are not, even if the distance is smaller and they are not antipoles :)

Thoughts. Mask

Have you ever had the impression that there are more of you? Or that parts of you want something and parts of you want exactly the opposite? Or that you worst enemy is yourself?
If you answered "Yes" at least once at any of the above questions, then you must probably have a pretty good idea about what this peinture is representing: just one part of the self, one of the many present in each human being.
It's called "Mask", so, there is something more in it. And that's somehow related to our ability of hiding or disclosing us (from/to the others or from/to our own-self).
Living in society creates a certain space between some relative and invisible borders, but still very restrictive. This is why so little people succeed in being transparent to everybody else.
Most of us just adjust our behavior and our way of seeing accordingly to what happens around. And, most of times, it's enough just to pretend you're there - in a certain space, in a group, you don't need eyes to see, you don't need ears to hear. Just some physical presence and you're counted as present.
That's all about in the speed era: just let the others see you're there and, once in a while, say something to make sure they noticed you (that's why the mask has a mouth).
You don't need all your senses. Which is basically bad.
The only good part is that, after this mask, you can still be yourself, you can still pay as much attention and use as much of all your senses as you want, for the things that are really important to you.
The masks are usually alone and their background is pretty simple. For this one, there is still some hope (some red shadows in that black) :)

Thoughts. Head with necklace

Basically there are two types of people in this world: the prey and the pradator (let's call them hunters). Some certain persons can switch between these two types based on a lot of internal and external factors, but one of these attributes is more powerful than the other.

Anyway, what you see here is another representation of the ones that use to collect notches on their gun. I don't consider that only men are collectind this kind of artifacts, but I prefer to paint women :)

The prade, in this case, is the "broken" woman worn like a necklace by her hunter. She has no clear features (on her face) as she was brutalized by the experience. The hunter has almost no features at all because he doesn't need them.

Thoughts. Two bodies

I'll not tell you what to see in this peinture. I'm pretty sure you see very well :)
But I'll try a (short) peroration on sexuality (this is never useless:) ). A very dear friend of mine wonderfully said that beauty is not about how many kilos you have but about how you fill the space you're placed in.
It's pretty the same about the sexuality, it doesn't matter if you're ugly or beautiful/handsome, thin or fat, short or tall. Sexuality is a state of your mind that gets really fast to the others. How is that possible?! Since we try so hard sometimes to make ourselves understood by the others :)
Well, what is fun and entertaining is usually having a greater success to all types of audiences with not so much effort. And we associate sex with fun and entertainment (you know the chemical/psychological reactions that happen in our bodies when having sex)

Maybe the first step in getting a higher degree of sexuality is becoming aware of one of your sexual attributes - like the lady in this painting which would be a very normal human being if her breasts wouldn't capture the entire attention of the watcher. Are they bigger, more beautiful than others? No way, but her state of mind can make look them the best ones in the world.
Step two: Choose whatever part of your body and practice (might be one of your fingers:) )
Before moving to step three it's important to learn that being sexually attractive is not very difficult. What's difficult is to learn controlling it, in order to expose it only when you want to. Here is where some brain would be very helpful ;)

Step three is more like a warning: make sure you know you're the only one responsible for what happens to you (sexually related stuffs) when you use your sexuality.

Why this sarcastic peroration? Because sex is a huge faintness of the human beings. And their weaknesses are the others' power for controlling them.

Thoughts. Family

Pretty easy to get this one: a 3-members family :)
They are all about the same colour which is good: they are all part of the same unit. They are different sizes so identifying the child, mom and dad should not be very difficult (let's assume that dad is taller:) ). Their orientation in space it's pretty obvious: the parents are "child-ward".
Let's move to the more difficult ones:
- why don't they have faces?
- is this a family with only one child?
- what's that (async) delimitation in the left side of the painting?
This painture is a childhood memory of a grown-up so it's not the faces he remembers, but the touch and the overall sensation. No, it's not a family with only one child, but, in this snapshot, he's the only one (it's his memory :) ).
And that geometrical delimitation is the border with the reality, reality that might be better or might be worse.
Not too much left to say, maybe only that if you don't have nice memories from childhood, manufacture yourself a few :). Dreaming is for free.

Thoughts. Nothing left

This one's title is suggesting pretty everything I might say. After each love story (which is, of course, the one), there is a moment, usually short, when at least one of those two involved in that story realises that he/she's not in the right place, not with the right one and hits the road.

What you see in this painting is the snapshot of that moment of waking up, when you move two steps away and take an objective look at what it used to be your perfect couple.

And you see two total strangers and a clear line between them (or a wall). They are not similar, they don't have the same ideas, or feelings (in my paintings the feelings, thoughts, etc. are usually the background) and they are ugly together. And of course, it's not you the one that makes the other one ugly, as is his/her fault ;).

So, you take a deep breath and move further, looking for the true love of your life.

What you haven't seen is that the total strangers are incomplete (only heads) when staying so separated and that's probably because you're not in the right position for watching them with critical eyes.

But, that's the beauty of life. Keep looking for the one!

Thoughts. Love

I don't like naming my peintures, this only limits the watchers' imagination. But, since I named it, take some more limitation with some guidelines :)

This painting of mine is called "love" :). I hope you're agreeing with me that these guys are really ugly. Well, the truth that everybody knows is that love is blind. Just try a bit to see one of them thru the other's eyes. Oh, (s)he's not so bad, (s)he's almost cute, and that ear is sexy :)

I'll not try to explain you what love is as I have no idea:) and a peroration on this topic is useless. My goal is to let you a bit inside this amalgam of colours (in fact, there are only 2 colours excepting the black and white - red and blue; girls and boys, you got it ;) ).

Each of these two comes from a background - a different one, as you can very well see, but, still, there are some moments of their lives, some feelings and maybe some dreams that are quite alike. In fact, these small affinities are the basis of their love , they brought them together (and very probably, they will throw them apart - but that's another painting).

Why is one so bright and the other so off-colour? Pretty simple.. any love story has one in the couple a bit more, more, or much more in love than the other. In our case, one is much more in love than the other. May be the brightest one, as being in love brings him/her the happiness that makes him/her shine like star, or may be the faint one as the love makes her/him see the other as a quasi-god.

You can choose whatever fits you :).

Gallery

mask

family

mom, child & cat

love

nothing left

2 bodies

old face

pear face

red fantasy

transsexual

face

dream

man's mind

black & white

head with necklace

eden

mask

going to b52

leaving b52

I like the most
mask
family
mom, child & cat
love
nothing left
2 bodies
old face
pear face
red fantasy
transsexual
face
dream
man's mind
black & white
head with necklace
eden
mask
going to b52
leaving b52

Thoughts. Black and White

I was talking some time ago with a guy about balance, balanced people and events.

How do you get to balance? By beautifully combining blacks and whites in order to get the most perfect grey tones (like my background :) ) or by choosing a balanced number of whites and blacks and letting them as they are?
Is more balanced a person who always is able to say: "I strongly agree" or "I strongly disagree", or one who's always in a "Somewhat agree"/"Somewhat disagree" position.
Let me just guess: we're human, we have emotions, we are the slaves of our emotions, so we're always in the "somewhat"'s boat.
I would be very happy to learn that people have strong opinions about everything that really matters. That grey tone is for only when we don't really care.
Black and white is not extremism, is not denial and for sure is not superficiality, but it's damn difficult...
Actually, that's the introduction of my paintings ;)