Artist Profile

Cristina Marcu

San Anselmo, CA

Artist Statement

The synchronicity of sound, feelings and colors create one energy flow. This energy flow is the initial moment that invites me to step into a blank canvas and begin a new painting. With my first new brush strokes I start to create a relationship between the obvious and the beyond imagination and this opens new doors to artistic curiosity and expression. It is looking through windows of reality at what can take place beyond what we traditionally see. I have fun with colors as I use acrylics to inspire the unexplainable forms and shapes from my beginning brush strokes. I enjoy layering on pieces of information with thick and thin layers of oil paint to complete a painting. Imagination and feelings drive my brush and palette knife to bring life to my canvas.
The inspiration to paint stems from my soul’s longing to explore the depth of an unexplainable form.
My use of color has a direct correlation to sound vibrations. Colors can be heard and sound can be seen as in my paintings the flow of colors is intuitive and creates rhythmic patterns within which shape and form are transformed into an abstract experience.

Biography

A colorist at heart, her works are inspired by the Russian and Romanian folk art that surrounded her as a child in her native country of Romania. She was raised with the arts and at the age of seven she attended George Enescu Music Conservatory where she began to study classical piano.

Her strong education in classical music is projected in her paintings through an imaginative approach to color. She loves sound and sound is her palette. As she says: “ colors in harmony are not my only objective; dissonance is as much a part of expressing how I feel.” A paradox of dream versus reality becomes the desired effect. “I want to lead the viewer to experience openness to the moment and the mystery of the unknown.”

A self- taught artist at first, her curiosity and passion for new learning experiences took her to Pasadena’s Art Center College of Design and UCLA where she studied drawing and painting.