The sunflower has always fascinated me, because I think it rewrites, with each sunrise and sunset of each season, every year, again and again, the story of life. As a child, I dreamed of it even before I really touched it. Then followed the encounters with the sunflower fields, from the raw green before spring bloom and the yellow as an electric arc of the summer petals, to the dry bronze of the autumn discs and their remembrance through the remnants of stems covered with flowers of ice in winter. For me, the sunflower is a pretext to express myself artistically, constantly questioning and exploring the ontological meaning of what we call “existence” under the sign of entropy. I represent / translate / paint them as I dreamed of them and as I lived them, opening worlds, opening door keys of ancestral worlds that are still right next to us. I represent / translate / paint the way they make the airspace around them vibrate, their paradoxical ephemerality, the magic of their almost human dimensions, the way they seem to gather the sun and emit it in their turn as if it were a floral diffraction. That is why my sunflowers will never be flower “photo”-like portraits, but mental representations of my visions related to them, they will be suns, moons, portals, parallel worlds, seasons, life cycles, quantum states, stories of Light, presents of sun gods, dichotomies in chromatic explosions. Never just flowers, be they of the sun. This portfolio includes some of my sunflowers, as many portals and invitations to meditate at what we call existence existence under the sign of entropy.
some diptychs and triptychs | 2006-present
Sunflowers. Summer-Winter Solstices | 2019 | Diptych, 90 x 100 cm.
(Acrylic & oil on canvas, gold-like sheets, sea glass, silicone)
Since childhood I have been fascinated by the rhythm of life in accordance with the rhythm of the solstices and equinoxes. In this rhythm we find the ontological meaning of life. In this rhythm, in this duality, the miracle of life is written. Uncreated energies recycle time and space into eternal dual universes. Here is the horizon of the event, and through this artwork I explore this miracle of these eternal dual worlds. Once exposed, it is thought to live in this duality, having to be rotated twice a year, in accordance with the sequence of the solstices.
Sunflowers at Summer-Winter Solstices | 2022 | Diptych, 136 x 124 cm.
(Oil on canvas, varnishes, gold/silver sheets, sea glass, electronic devices, coins, CDs, straws, screws)
The rhythm of life in accordance with the rhythm of the solstices: a perpetual exploration. Increases and decreases in a sinusoidal rhythm within the miracle of life is written. Uncreated energies recycle time and space into eternal dual universes. I interpret here the sunflower in the sense of a portal. We meditate in front of it first through the infinite reflections of light in the CDs that make up the “solar” disk of the sunflower. Their physical presence also induces the presence of the music contained, which we cannot hear, but we know is there: our dreams, our plans, our emotions. The symbolic petals are pieces of sea glass, polished over long years by wahes, stones and sand. The electronic circuits make me think of the codes by which the world is built. The wooden straw fabric suggest a horizontal passage, in the depth of the horizon. Space, air, the flow of time are suggested by the use of coins as petals carried by the wind at the winter solstice and by the use of transparent sea glass as petals-clouds carried by the wind at the summer solstice: they suggest a vertical passage, in the depth of the sky. Here the sunflower is a being-plant-tree-soul entity, and the state of this work of art never ends, because it is continuously “painted” by the randomness of light reflections. The artworks can be exhibited separately, with an autonomous destiny and existence, but in the light of their signification, they were thought to be displayed together as a diptych.
Sunflowers at Autumn-Spring Equinoxes | 2022 | Diptych, 80 x 160 cm.
(Oil on canvas, varnishes, gold/silver sheets, sea glass, electronic devices, shells, CDs, straws, screws)
The rhythm of life in accordance with the rhythm of the equinoxes: a perpetual exploration. Days equal to nights. Nights equal to days. The spring equinox announces growth and maturity, the autumn equinox decline and old age. Balance… a difficult thing to find in life. Uncreated energies recycle time and space into eternal dual universes. The presence of the CDs induces the presence of the music contained, which we cannot hear, but we know is there: our dreams, plans, emotions. The symbolic petals are pieces of sea glass, polished over long years by waves, stones and sand, are the presence of the infinite horizons of the sea. The electronic circuits remind the idea of the codes by which the world is built. The wooden straw fabrics suggest a horizontal passage, in the depth of the horizon. The space, air, the flow of time are suggested by the use of freshwater snail shells as petals carried by the wind at the spring equinox and by the use of saltwater snail shells as leaf-petals carried by the wind at the autumn equinox: they suggest a vertical passage, in the depth of the sky. Here, the sunflowers are beings-plants-souls too, in the bright Light of the balance, because balance should be a way of life. The artworks can be exhibited separately, with an autonomous destiny and existence, but in the light of their signification, they were thought to stay together as a diptych.
Sunflowers. Spring-Autumn Equinoxes | 2020 | Diptych, 70 x 100 cm.
(Oil on canvas, pieces of jewelry, abandoned tablets, dried sunflowers, gold sheets)
Days equal to nights. Nights equal to days. Neither light nor darkness. The spring equinox announces growth and maturity, the autumn equinox decline and old age. I have two teenage boys, one born around the vernal equinox, the other born around the autumn equinox. Balance… a difficult thing to find, especially at the age of teenagers… it was not easy to convince them that the understanding of the ontological meaning of life is infinitely more important than the virtual world and its interfaces. It was a long road until we made them realize that it is to their advantage to limit the hours spent in front of the screens, and consumerism is not on the parents’ side in this unequal fight. But but being put in contact with the wonders of the real world, for my kids won the real life, not the virtual world. Now they manage to use the virtual world for informational, communicational and educational purposes, not being modern “slaves” of social media and shopping for tones of things not needed. Having a destiny different from that of recycling and experiencing the drama of a metaphorical flowering with a screw as a pistil, their abandoned tablets became part of this diptych that tells the story of becoming, choices, and balance as way of life. A life in which technology is only a part, but not The Life itself.
Sunflower. Summer sunset – winter morning vibes | 2022 | Diptych, 70 x 86 cm.
(Oil on canvas, gold/silver sheets, silicone, parts of a snapshot photo camera, a wood whistle)
The sunset in a field of sunflowers is a kind of magic. At the peak of their lives, in the summer, sunflowers seem to radiate light, not just receive it. To these feelings are added the sounds of insects and birds, and the smells of all the nearby herbs. This state of fact is a reality in the summer and a memory in the winter, when the same place becomes ghostly, deserted, frozen, shrouded in a white silence and only with the smell of cold, so that, in the following year, everything will come back to life. This is a kind of a magic circle of life in two moments of antagonistic solstices, talking about the duality of life. The camera included in the work dedicated to the summer sunset reminds of photography as a means to stop time and “freeze” memories, somehow trying to bring back to our souls the way we relive the stories behind our old childhood photos, with our parents, with our past… The wooden whistle included in the work dedicated to the winter morning reminds us of the temporary absence of the music of life. The artworks can be displayed separately, with an autonomous destiny and existence, but in the light of their signification and with the meaning of the life cycle, they were thought to be displayed together.
Sunflower. Sunrise – Sunset from polluted land and air | 2022 | Diptych, 70 x 86 cm.
(Oil on canvas, balsa wood, parts of badminton rackets and of snorkelling silicone tube)
For me, the sunflower is amazing also because it somehow has the silhouette and scale of a man. In a field, all the sunflowers follow the sun’s journey across the sky in unison. It is all the more sad that the earth, waters and air are becoming more and more polluted. Although these artworks can be exhibited separately, I prefer to be exhibited together, in a diptych. Why? Because the two badminton rackets cannot exist separately, otherwise the game would no longer exist. Our relationship with nature, which we destroy in an unfair “game”, can be read in the same sense. One of the symbolic victims is the sunflower… any sunflower can be, metaphorically, a human being… symbolically, they have the same figure and scale and depend on clean and pure earth, water and air… just as they depend on the sun, regardless of whether we understand by this a star, a miracle or a divinity.
Sunflower. Summer-Autumn sunset vibes | 2022 | Diptych, 70 x 86 cm.
(Oil on canvas, an old broken violin, balsa wood, parts of snorkelling silicone tube, small plastic figurines)
Life has a music of uncreated energies. Silence is a music in itself. Together, life in silence crystallizes the most beautiful gift of man: blissful silence. These works of art can be exhibited separately, but they are created to form a diptych. Why? Because they have integrated the two faces of the same musical instrument which, no longer being able to be played, now turns into something else. Only together can they form an instrument and it, only in skilled hands, can sing. I found this violin thrown in the trash. I felt sadness. Through its silence, this instrument sang to me. Only in quiet peace can a child play, a young man can grow, an old man can remain serene… play is part of us. An abandoned toy is a sign of sadness. In these artworks the abandoned toys are transformed into symbolic petals. This diptych is an allegory. The way we torture nature is the opposite of music, that music of happy silence that many of us don’t hear anymore and, unfortunately, even more of us don’t even look for…
Sunflowers. Summer-Autumn morning vibes | 2022 | Diptych, 70 x 86 cm.
(Oil on canvas, broken laptop keyboard, audio tapes, plastic carcases, silicone)
Some summer mornings have that fog that envelops the fields in a metaphorical blanket of heat not allowed to leave the earth at night. The sun rises and is first a globe, only then it really burns for a new day. As scheduled, the sunflowers turn to him and start over again in their marriage with the light. Everything is programmed. Nothing happens otherwise. The laptop keyboard is also metaphorically the root, the earth, an arche-tekton. In autumn mornings, control seems to be lost. The fog becomes denser, the sun further away, and the light was getting less and less. One by one the flowers dry up and die. The atmosphere resembles the music listened to on an old tape recorder, in a world of my childhood, before the virtual world. From the summer solstice to the autumn equinox, this is one of the stories at the edge of a field of sunflowers.
Sunflowers. Summer-autumn air, story, vibes | 2006 | Diptych, 100 x 140 cm.
(Oil on canvas, pieces of newspapers, nylon mesh, dried sunflower discs and seeds)
I made these works being impressed by the symphony of a field of sunflowers in a region of Romania called Dobrogea, at the Black Sea. That summer, the whole camp was like a cathedral of peace and harmony, like a love letter, like a promise. I returned there in the fall of the same year. The same place was burnt by the sun, the sunflowers were dry and the field seemed to have the fate of an old newspaper or of a love letter thrown away after a breakup… another breakup in the circle of life… two states of mind… two complex feelings.
Sunflower. Youth – Maturity – Old Age | 2006 | Triptych, 70 x 150 cm.
(Oil on canvas, pieces of newspapers, nylon mesh, dried sunflower discs)
This work coincides with the moment when I became aware of the transitory state of my life. Long bike rides among sunflower fields made me realize how insignificant I am, a man in a huge “field” of people, living a life in a limited number of summers, as a sunflower lives a summer. The artwork tries to “capture” the emotion I experienced then, under the burning sun that made the fields vibrate with answers to my existential questions.
sunflowers: some meanings | 2016-present
Sunflowers. Spring vibes | 2016 | 100 x 100 cm
(Oil on canvas, gold-like and silver-like sheets, dried sunflower discs)
I made this work inspired by the music of an important Romanian pianist whose friendship I enjoy. Listening to him play the piano one spring morning, I lived through his music the experience of a connection between heaven and earth… and I saw colors. This mixed media artwork tries to translate that experience into reality, and the sunflowers as an element of the connection between heaven and earth, between music and the logic of the universe are a pretext to transmit it. Through this artwork I try to talk visually about the fragility of life and a little about an ethereal world, beyond life on earth, where there is no pain, sadness and sighing.
Sunflower. Pollination vibes | 2022 | 40 x 80 cm
(Oil on canvas, an old vinyl, a broken smart watch, shells, beads, little metal rings)
One of the keys to life on earth is the pollination of flowers. Electromagnetic radiation, pollution, climate changes endanger the insects that do this, and especially the bees. We can say that pollination is the key to life. I am trying to convey a vibrant message through this work in this regard. Vinyl belongs to a past state of technology, but the music “kept” in it can be listened to forever, unlike electromagnetically recorded music, which can disappear at any time in an electromagnetic storm. The smart watch is a metaphor for the precariousness of today’s technology. A mechanical watch can be used practically forever and even broken, it shows the exact time twice a day more precisely than any atomic watch, while a smartwatch without power and a dedicated card is a completely useless entity. The dialogue between time and non-time is the story told with the pretext of this sunflower in full miracle of pollination.
Portrait of a sunflower in a spring morning | 2022 | 60 x 80 cm
(Oil on canvas, a vinyl, the broken lens of a photo camera)
I feel that there is the presence of the sun in a sunflower, as in a vinyl there is the presence of music and in a camera the presence of the past. This suite of “presents” inspired me to explore the potential of a true third-degree encounter with a sunflower as a human being… Depending on how we understand our relationship with the natural environment and with all the beings that compose it, the kind of that we relate to this universe and protect it. If we believe that on earth only we humans are beings, and everything else is things, just because we are the only ones with consciousness, then we are lost… This idea is explored in this portrait of a sunflower in a spring morning.
Sunflower. AstroVibes | 2019 | 60 x 80 cm
Sunflower-Moonflower. A sunflower in the moonlight, in the realm of dreams, more idea, mantra, emotion, at the end of the spectrum of visible Light, in ultraviolet world, at the border with invisible light.
Sunflower. In the light of a storm eye | 2022 | 80 x 80 cm
(Oil on canvas, varnishes, sunflower disc, black stones, wooden beads, wooden straws)
Through this mixed media artwork, I’ve tried to visually translate the extremely strong impression that the experience of strong storm left me when I was cycling at the beginning of this 2022 summer through a field of sunflowers in Dobrogea, on the Black Sea, in Romania